


Windfall for the non-believer

by glovered



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Podfic Available, Suburbia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-21
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/pseuds/glovered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sam's first Hell flashback, he and Dean work a job that means posing as a couple in a planned community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [PODFIC](http://archiveofourown.org/works/350656%22)

  


> You'll do everything you're destined to do. All of it.  
> But I know, I know – you're not strong enough, you're scared,  
> you got daddy issues, you can't do it, right?  
> Zachariah, "It's a Terrible Life"  
> 

  


"Do what you gotta do, but I'm telling you boys, you don't stay put you're not gonna solve this thing." Bobby gave the both of them a stern look from the couch. Rufus squinted at them, too, as if their hesitancy only confirmed his low opinion.

"Look," Dean said. "I didn't say we weren't going to do it. Just—damn, Bobby. A month?"

"Just because you'll be acting settled, doesn't mean you can't go on weekend trips."

"I'm settled," Rufus cut in. "You boys think I don't dig up graves and chase things with a machete? Damn straight I do. And I have a nice cabin up in the sequoias I visit twice a year. You trying to say I don't?"

"And you think I don't get out?" Bobby asked. "Hell, now that I got my legs back, I hardly sit down." He narrowed his eyes at the both of them, a hard look. "Now git. Rufus and I've got some adult business to attend to."

Dean hesitated, flicking a glance at Sam, who was already frowning his way. Bobby watched them deliberate while Rufus secured the bottle of Blue Label from under the desk and unscrewed the top.

"Shoo, boys," Rufus said. "Unless you wanna hear about the time Bobby here got caught up with a goat man."

Sam squinted. "Goat man?"

"Sam," Dean barked out.

They left reluctantly. They caught the faint sound of a guffaw before the old, porch door swung shut behind them.

  


  
Now here they were on a coffee-colored sofa with a French press of Sulawesi Gold on the side table next to the tray of mini croissants, which were delectable and warm from the oven. Dean's legs were stretched out beside an ottoman and he was pretty much bored with the whole thing already.

At least he wasn't feeling as awkward as Sam apparently was. This could have been due to the fact that Dean was sitting back, letting him do all the work, not stepping in. He could read the discomfort in the line of Sam's shoulders as he made smalltalk with one Leila Shaheen.

"Oh we've lived all over," he was saying. "Both born in Kansas, but I ended up going to school at Stanford."

"Wow, Stanford," Leila said, and Dean didn't even feel the twinge, not any more, not after everything. "I've never lived on that side of the country. I've never even visited."

"Never?"

"Nope. My mom and I moved around a lot too, but never west of the Mississippi River. 'Other folks'll handle that side of the country,' she always used to tell me." She laughed. Dean felt so far removed from civilian life it hurt. "Yeah, Taylor and I met, got married, and we've moved around quite a bit before coming out here."

Sam spread his hands. "So, Blue Ash, Ohio."

"Yeah, it's pretty great. Small, but close enough to Cincinnati that you don't feel stuck.”

"Right. Because a lot of stuff happens in Cincinnati.” Dean glanced over at that. Sam didn't usually go for chiding with the locals.

Leila took it in stride, matching him one for one. "Hey, cut the sarcasm! Did you know the first bag of airmail lifted by a hot air balloon was in Cincinnati?"

"You're right," Sam conceded. "And William Howard Taft was born here."

"Uh huh," she said. "There's a lot you can learn from Wikipedia."

"Yep, the things you learn."

And Leila was nice, really nice, holding up the conversation like a good neighbor, making them feel welcome. He and Sam hadn't ever moved into the neighborhoods they were working to protect, not since they were kids. They hadn't ever had to keep up appearances for such an extended period of time, so when Leila told them they'd fit in nicely, the vote of confidence really went a long way.

Dean couldn't complain about the husband, either. Taylor was sunk into the sofa just opposite, his sprawl a mirror of Dean's own posture. He had the same politely interested, meet-the-neighbors expression on his face, the we're-being-adults-now kind of mask that taped clean over a gaping vacancy. Dean wondered what kids like that thought about. Football? Magazines they'd flipped through recently?

"Isn't that right?"

Dean mentally snapped to attention, although outwardly he only blinked in Sam's direction.

He knew that tone, it was the one Sam had honed until it was sharp enough to cut right into Dean's thoughts when the two of them were supposed to be playing a part but Dean had instead been checking out the cheese tray.

"Oh yeah," he responded. He straightened a fraction from where he'd been lounging against the arm of the sofa. "Totally right."

Sam gave him an unimpressed look.

"Don't worry," Leila told Sam. "Taylor here isn't listening either. I can tell because he's started picking at his jeans."

"I'm listening," Taylor said, and even Dean could see through that one.

He changed the subject. "This didn't used to be a residential area, did it? It's a kind of strange place for a gated community."

"The development was built last year," Taylor told him. "This used to be some sort of business park."

Sam leaned forward, like he was intrigued. "Until some arsonist torched the place, right?"

"Yeah, it's a tragic story."

Leila smiled apologetically at them both. "Taylor, don't scare the neighbors."

Dean followed her lead. It wouldn't do to go drawing attention to this too soon, anyhow. He slapped his knees before he stood. "Welp, we better head out.”

"It's been really nice meeting you," Leila said.

Sam ducked his head, playing the part well. "You, too. We were a little nervous moving into suburbia like this. It's nice to know we're in good company."

Taylor stood to shake their hands. "Don't hesitate to swing by if you need any help moving anything. Both of us have a few weeks vacation right now, so we'll be around.”

He showed them out.

Leaving was a relief. Maple trees rustled quietly down the street, quaint lawns lay framed and well-manicured along unbroken sidewalk, and Sam and Dean ambled from Leila and Taylor's to their own cookie-cutter, up-to-regulation two-storey next door, sun shining hot where it hit them, humidity hanging just this side of comfortable. There was a pink lawn flamingo planted dead center in their yard and a brick path leading up to their porch.

They made it inside, into the relative safety of four walls and a roof.

Sam stood around on the parquet of the entry, like he was waiting to be invited in. Dean made instantly for the kitchen, because houses meant supplies you had on hand rather than needing to head out to the nearest 7-11 when you wanted a snack. They'd arrived that morning with only the one duffel each, a few shopping bags of food, and about ten cases of beer, which meant, all things considered, nothing short of paradise.

"Thanks for helping me over there, man. Your complete lack of effort really, you know, made that whole thing real comfortable.” Sam's voice followed him into the kitchen, a nagging that drifted, normalized everything it passed over. The reality of the situation was staggering; they were an entire two rooms apart from one another in an honest-to-God house they were supposedly renting, with a second storey and beer organized by shade on separate fridge shelves.

Dean reached into the fridge and grabbed a couple cold bottles, saying, "Any time, sweetheart.”

He heard Sam mumble something, then say, louder, "I really don't think this is going to be as easy as you think it will."

Dean reemerged moments with two popped microbrews. He handed one to Sam. "I never said it was gonna be simple. Just a bit more routine than driving all over the place and stirring the pot. A chance to take it easy for a while and figure out our own shit."

He went to poke Sam in the temple, behind which lay the tiniest, most important wall in the universe, but Sam ducked out of the way. He made his way in through the living room and to the kitchen table. Dean headed to the couch, where he foresaw many a lazy day. He settled himself and took a long, cold pull at his beer.

"Fine," Sam said. "Just so long as you realize that creeping around people's backyards, or whatever, is going to make us a little less than popular."

"Got a better idea?" Dean asked, and then mimicked, "'Excuse me, ma'am. We're looking for some remains of people who were burned alive somewhere hereabouts. Have you found any?'"

"No, I don't have a better plan," Sam admitted. "So, what? Are we just going to work our way through the backyards of the entire community, then? There are at least three hundred houses."

Dean shrugged. "The remains were scattered in the fire, but besides that it sounds like a pretty basic haunting. Seriously, if you have a better idea, let's hear it. I've been racking my brain, but now that there's this grid of houses, I don't really see what else we can do."

"I guess so."

"Bobby's right, it should take about a month to check them all. It sounds like a long time, but it'll do you some good."

Sam pulled out his computer.

"I know you're antsy," Dean continued. "You've been all on my ass since last month. Hell, you came to, and an hour later you wanted to go on a hunt. Look how that turned out: dragons and then friggen spider monsters."

"I told you," Sam said. "I felt like I'd just jumped into the Pit and come out the other side, like no time had passed. I was all adrenaline for a week, still feel that way. But bad as the case was, we still managed to clean up some of the mess I'd made when I—when I was hunting with Samuel."

Dean put his empty beer bottle on the coffee table. "I told you, none of that was your _fault_."

"Whatever." Sam frowned. "If you want to play the suburban family for a few weeks, just say so."

"Hey," Dean said. "This is just a routine hunt to get us back into the swing of things, put some souls to rest. And if a few weeks of relaxation will benefit anyone, it'll be you."

"Fine, it's just that...."

"What?"

"Well, with the, you know, community agreement we had to sign? Doesn't it freak you out a little? People are gonna assume—"

"People aren't gonna assume anything. They'll know for certain that they've got a nice gay couple down the street. And just you wait, we're gonna have chicks with jello bowls lining up down the block. That or folks'll just avoid us. In any case, no one'll suspect a thing, they'll think we're so tied up picking china patterns."

Sam frowned. "But I mean, what if—"

"Who friggen cares, man?"

They had a quiet moment, staring at each other while Dean's eloquent point sunk in.

"I mean seriously," he said. "We'll be here, what? Three weeks? A month, tops? And maybe you'll like these people—hell, you already do. That chick—"

"Leila."

"—Leila, you're already all slumber party with her. Which is fine, Sam," he said, king of kindness. "Curl your ridiculously long hair, paint your toenails green. Go all out! I support you. Just don't make it my problem if your girlfriend thinks you're cheating on me."

"A simple 'don't worry about the gay thing' would have probably sufficed," Sam muttered.

Dean kicked his feet up to rest on the table. "Now make me a sandwich."

"Pressing your luck," Sam said, but left the room. The guy ate like a beast, he might as well make Dean something on the side while he was at it.

"Extra mayo," Dean called. "Can't be shirking the good stuff, just because we're settling down."

Sam's response was muffled from the kitchen, unintelligible. Dean answered anyway.

"And don't you even worry about what the neighbors'll think about your boyfriend getting chubby," he yelled so Sam could hear him in the other room. "I have a great personality!"

He leaned back into the couch cushions, listening to Sam noises: the plastic sound of the bread bag, the placement of mayonnaise jar to counter top, the quiet sighing that Sam often did whether he was affronted or tired or just spacing out, thinking about whatever it was that went through that kid's head.

He closed his eyes. Sam would wander in at some point with sandwiches and his computer. They'd eat, and then, later, they would go into the upstairs study—might as well put on a monocle and pour the bourbon—to look over the case.

They'd lain out the arsenal of facts and evidence that morning, a clear picture of how a research facility had been torched last year with people inside. The arsonist claimed that the experiments being done used embryonic stem cells, something which his organization could not let go unpunished. The dude had already been tried and jailed, and it was a clean case, but now, half a year later, death echoes were being seen at random all over the gated community that had been built over the site.

He and Sam had newspaper clippings and printouts from online periodicals, along with e-mails Sam'd hacked from the Sheriff's department to sift through and organize. Dean liked to arrange their evidence just like their dad had done it, with bits and clues pinned or taped to every flat surface so that the room looked like a freaking serial killer's trophy wall. Sam always gathered the pivotal papers later into thin manila folders to carry with them under one arm.

Yeah, they'd wait until after nightfall so they could sneak into backyards to search out the residual traces of the deceased. Dean had no idea how they were going to figure that one out, but he and Sam seemed to work best in a crunch, oftentimes it seemed like their lives were actually being woven by the book series, Chuck falling back on _deus ex machina_ to resolve their cases, rather than the other way around.

After scouting out the situation, they'd return to the house and conk out in that big bed upstairs a few hours before dawn. Rinse and repeat.

He envisioned this new take on settled life, how they'd just generally lie around and veg out. He and Sam, they'd drink a lot and eat three square meals, and shank them some spirits on the side. He'd watch a few shows. He'd laugh at or with stupid people on screen while Sam sat at his computer, because the kid never chilled out. To him, relaxing meant typing away or reading. He was always doing something—

When Dean jerked awake, a sandwich was on the low table and amorphous nightmares that had his heart thumping an erratic beat resolved themselves into the quiet flickering of the TV on his face, lights behind his eyelids. He rubbed a hand over his face, listening to Sam typing in the kitchen.

  


  
At two that morning, they were in the backyard of Mr. and Mrs. Freaky Lawn Gnome Collection.

The sight of the row of the little guys with their smiling faces and ceramic hats stopped Sam short. It was only for a second, it probably hadn't meant a thing, but Dean went cold all over just the same. He got that creeping feeling across the back of his neck when he considered what sort of memories a lawn gnome could trigger. He shone a flashlight in Sam's face to be sure, saying, "You got something to share with the class?"

Sam shoved the light aside and whispered, "We should be quiet. Neighbors aren't going to take too kindly to us moving in if they see us tramping around their yards."

Sam wandered the perimeter of the grass with the EMF reader, watching as the small light blinked steadily. He was in full-view in the moonlight, and the creeping feeling that they were being watched expanded and blew out of proportion as Dean shifted on his feet by the line of gnomes. He watched Sam's back, glancing up at dark windows at intervals.

They covered the entire far block that night, working gate locks, jumping fences when they couldn't. They got nothing, despite having waved the EMF over twenty-four backyards. Dean remembered how he had rigged that old walkie-talkie up when he was twenty-two referring to a rough plan Pastor Jim had sent to a P.O. Box for him, how there'd been bits of wires spread out on the half-tables of four consecutive motel rooms until he'd gotten it right. He hadn't needed a walkie-talkie anymore anyway; Sam had taken the other one to California with him, shoved into the bottom of his suitcase and useless, like an afterthought.

"All right, that's a no-go." Sam stuck the EMF in his pocket after their sweep of the final backyard for the night and they high-tailed it outta there.

  


  
The two always met at the same bar. It was an underground place with a smokey atmosphere that covered nicely for when one of their party disappeared into thin air. Castiel had made a study of humans, but somehow he would never get used to this type of coming and going.

"What is your purpose?" he asked Victor Henriksen that first night.

Henriksen looked drawn, but you would too if you had been pulled from death by some divine force. However, stranger things had happened, and, to Henriksen's understanding, much of them centered around the very thing which he eternally sought:

"I am searching for the Winchester brothers."

Castiel smiled ruefully, just a twitch of the lips, and said: "I too am searching for them."

"I feel you.” The late Special Agent lounged back in his chair, rolling a bottle between his corporeal hands. "You can have over a decade of detective work under your belt, and somehow they still manage to evade you."

"It's not that," Castiel said. "Normally my kind does not find it difficult to locate humans. However, not long ago I thought it best to etch sigils upon Sam and Dean's rib cages, and now they are only available by cellular phone. They seem to have switched theirs off for the moment, or else misplaced their charger."

The server placed drinks on the table.

Castiel didn't touch the glass, and Victor said, "Drink your beer,” smiling like he could sense how uncomfortable he was. "Take a damn load off."

Castiel hesitated. A Heavenly battle was raging even as he sat there at the bar, but this time with Henriksen might prove just as valuable. He considered the glass before him.

"I'll have another five," he told the server. Among many virtues, Castiel valued perseverance, after all. He returned his attention to Henriksen, picking up the strand of the conversation where they'd left it. "A charger is an unfortunate thing to lose."

  


  
Third morning out and the road was beginning to take on that familiarity it always did after they'd run somewhere a couple of times, houses and hedges rooted in spot as they passed at a slow jog, like how Dean felt some pinch of recognition driving down certain highways that cut across the US. There was one in spot in specific on the 101, and at least ten exits along the 55.

His lungs were burning. His legs would hurt later, the lactic acid tightening and making him sore if he hadn't been keeping it up. No, it was the lungs, as if he still had to fight to reach the point of acclimatization while next to him Sam ran like it was nothing. He pummeled through the world, down the suburban street and past the trunks of maple trees and low brick walls, like a real-life action figure, like a nerdy demi-god.

They were in no rush, even though they were running. The morning felt fresh across Dean's face. Yesterday they'd angled for a few interviews with the locals downtown, which made him feel like things were going smoothly. The police hadn't given them much, just a few dismissive comments about mass hysteria and how everybody loved a good ghost story. But some guys down at the garage had talked, said they'd had a few folks come in to get their cars tuned up and heard them talking about weird stuff that was going on in that housing community on the outskirts. Stuff moving by itself, disembodied voices. A bartender at one of the dives along the strip had said about the same thing, inconclusive stuff, but it all made for good intrigue. It was enough to go on.

When he and Sam had circled back around and were just a block away from the house, they heard someone shouting. That neighbor chick, Leila, was jogging up the street towards them.

"Hey!"

They slowed as they met her. She was in pink gym shorts and had her hair up in a high ponytail.

"Don't wake up as early as you do, I see," she said. "You guys run every morning?"

"Yeah, five miles," Sam told her.

"Looking like this doesn't come easy," Dean added. "How about you?"

"Me? I run down to the supermarket and over to the park. Seven miles maybe?"

Dean let out a low whistle.

"Hey,” she said. "You know about the block party, don't you? They have one every month."

"Yeah, we got a flier in the mailbox and three phone calls from neighbors we haven't met yet," Sam said. "It's tomorrow, right?"

"Yep. And I'm sure everyone is dying to meet you. There're about three couples under the age of forty around here, and we're two of them. To tell you the truth, it's kind of freaking me out."

"So, this little shindig," Dean said. "Would it hurt your feelings if I told you I wasn't looking forward to it?"

Sam elbowed him in the ribs, so Dean stepped casually on his foot. "What he means," Sam said. "Is that we'll see you tomorrow night."

She shrugged. "See you then."

When they got back to the house, Sam took the first shower, because he was a sweaty bastard and Dean couldn't really stomach the kind of mellow way Sam had been letting him win arguments lately, ever since Cas had told him all about what he'd gotten up to pre-resouling.

Dean grabbed a Miller from the fridge and twisted the cap off. He leaned against the table until the phone rang on the otherwise empty counter.

He snagged it off its holder before the answering machine picked up. "Yello."

"Assistant Director Barker?"

He spit the cap from between his teeth. "Who am I speaking with?"

"The head of the Oklahoma State Police, Logan County.”

Dean grimaced at the dude's voice. He'd had one too many officers of the law call Bobby for them in just that tone. "Yeah, and?”

"And I have two gentlemen here who purport to be Agents Moss and Bell—"

"What do you mean 'purport to be'?" Dean had learned how to belittle with the best of them: from demons to skin walkers offering all manner of free-school courses in manipulation. "I sent two of our best men to check out the problem in that middle-of-nowhere pit you call a town. Now, if you're telling me you're doing your part to impede what is a matter of national importance, I'm thinking I'll need to send a few more agents to keep tabs."

"No, no, of course not I—"

"Color me unconvinced."

"I was just verifying—” The officer sounded like he was worried for his life, not just his job, so Dean swigged some beer and BS-ed a little more.

"I hope you're about to apologize and give my men free rein on what is becoming increasingly clear to be an ill-run investigation—"

"Yes, of course," the man said. "Just following protocol—"

"Now that you've embarrassed yourself and the entire state of Oklahoma by proxy, I'd put your services at the disposal of my men."

"Of course."

"Excuse me?"

"Sir,” he stammered. "Of course, sir."

"Are you done wasting my time?"

"Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Dean slammed the phone down in the cradle with a little whistle. He went to the bottom of the stairs, to where he could just hear the white noise of the shower. Sam would get a kick out of this.

"Just got off the phone with OKPD," he called up. "Bobby and Rufus are in Logan County on a job."

A car drove by outside as Dean stood at the foot of the stairs. No answer.

"Hey, remember when we had to gank that angry spirit in Logan county? You got bit by that dog?"

Rush of water, dead to the world.

"Got to play the big FBI boss and everything," he shouted.

He waited, but this was not a motel with paper thin walls and low water pressure besides. Sam couldn't hear him; Dean might as well have been shouting in an empty house.

  


  
The next day, they drove into Cincinnati and messed around a little. They got cheese steaks at some place that had rave reviews on Yelp, and Sam got scouted by a modeling agent for about the fiftieth time. When the man practically demanded his phone number, Sam backed away on the cracked sidewalk with his hands held in front of him, and Dean followed him at a leisurely pace after he'd managed to stop wheezing with laughter; it would never not be funny.

They went to pick up some supplies at the nearest Pep Boys, because Dean had the modest plan to use the following few weeks to replace a few of the Impala's belts, maybe switch out the drums. He'd change the brake fluid of course, which he’d eventually need Sam’s help with because someone needed to sit in the car and pump the pedal as he bled the lines. Thank God Sam was here.

It hit him in little ways, how he couldn't get enough of Sam. It didn't bear dwelling on, because not one thing would change that, not now, not ever. Now that Sam was back, most days Dean couldn't stand it when he was out of sight. It was this creeping feeling, all over his skin when the guy was gone. And then there were some moments where he felt it so much he thought, daringly, that he never wanted to see him again, that maybe it was too big.

All this, while picking up car parts. He just smirked when Sam came up next to him looking askance at some tools like they were alien instruments. Dean handed over a card, didn't matter which, to the man at the counter and rolled his shoulders, got it together.

Then, for the last stop of the day, they headed to the library.

They grabbed stacks of newspapers to rifle through, and when it was time to copy about sixty possibly useless sheets, Dean pulled out the handful of dirty coins he'd scrounged up from under the back seat of the car and went to town. Information was so hard to keep track of if they didn't print everything out. It was best when it could be at once scattered yet organized, malleable and easily modified.

Sam used to bitch about wasting paper, but then something changed. The way Dean figured, the forests would have burned if Sam hadn't taken one for the team, jumped into the pit to stop the Apocalypse, so Dean could print as many articles as he Goddamn pleased.

Some things were different, some stayed the same. Suffice to say, they were pro at operating library copy machines now.

At six PM, after doing a lot of reading and making very little headway on those who died, they headed back to the housing community. The sky was streaked with pink clouds and the neighborhood looked welcoming through the severity of the iron gate. Sam rattled off their eight-digit personal code as Dean punched it in out the window. The engine idled noisily as the gate dragged open, and then they were in, cruising down the block in the twilight.

"How did we end up with a code that has three sixes in a row?" Dean asked as they pulled up their driveway and into the garage. He didn't expect an answer, and none was forthcoming. "Hey, think we should change clothes for this thing tonight?"

Sam got out of the car, looking down at his own green flannel and stiff jacket combo. "I guess?"

Dean watched him. "You don't care, do you."

"You make it sound like that's a bad thing."

"It's just," Dean started. He pulled off his jacket, slinging the keys onto the table in the foyer.

It's just, Sam pre-Hell would have maybe cared a little more about fitting in, making their story believable. Or not? There were a few things Dean couldn't remember himself.

"I don't know." He looked Sam over. "You kind of fit in everywhere, I guess. But I sure can't go to this thing without putting on something nicer.”

"I guess."

When Dean came downstairs a few minutes later, though, Sam said, "What is that supposed to be?"

Dean turned in front of the hall mirror, checking out his ass. "I call it 'black thunder.'"

"Is that 'gay suburbanite' in layman's terms? Take your thunder back to the closet."

"Why Sammy, was that a slur?" he joked.

"What! No!" Sam's outrage followed Dean up the stairs. He shucked the shirt in their room and pulled on something more worn. Sam came in behind him, and started rooting around in the closet.

When Dean turned, Sam was doing up a white button-down, rolling the sleeves at the elbow. He grabbed a nicer jacket, looking pensive. After a beat, he said, "I just don't really like the whole stereotype look on you."

Dean laughed, at a loss, kind of uncomfortable to be honest.

Sam frowned. "Oh," he said. "I thought you were trying to—"

"What, be a total douchebag? Of course I wasn't going for anything in particular, but thanks for the vote of confidence." Dean kicked the strewn clothes into a pile. "I was just trying to look, I don't know. Nice? Like...like someone people would believe you'd date."

"Of course,” Sam said. "Sorry, man." And when he looked up, Sam was giving him a look that was apologetic, but also edging on fond. "Wear whatever you want."

"Oh my God, how is this even an issue?" Dean shook him by the shoulders. "Pull it together, Sam."

Sam tugged at the bottom of Dean's shirt and said, "Looking snappy."

"Shaddup."

  


  
They walked down the street, slowing at the driveway of the house on the corner. Dean looked into the well-lit living room where people were partially visible through the blinds, a homey scene that they would soon be a part of. Dean steeled himself like this was just another hunt, a group of nice people with a ghost problem.

When the door swung open, there was the sort of welcome cry which sounded not unlike something shouted at the commencement of a battle. A woman spread her arms wide, face painted with makeup and glee, and squealed, "Hello, hello! You must be the Wessons!"

"Hey!" Dean said, smiling big and elbowing Sam to do the same.

"Hi, I'm Sam." He shouldered in to shake her hand. "And this is Dean. Thank you so much for inviting us."

He pushed a jar of olives into her hands awkwardly.

"Oh don't be shy," she said. "I'm Mrs. Finch, and this is my husband, Mr. Finch. Here, give us a hug."

Hugs were had. They followed the Finches into a living room full of pleasantly milling people.

Dean shook another woman's hand. "Dean and Sam Wesson, pleasure to meet you."

"The new couple near the corner!" the host said to her. Dean's smile went tight as Sam put a hand lightly at his lower back for show. "The boys with the flashy car."

"Yep, that's us," he said.

"Don't worry," someone else told them. "The development was only built last year; we're all new around here."

"Try the deviled eggs," a man advised.

Mrs. Finch took Sam by the elbow. "Let's get you boys some drinks"

Dean felt Sam move his hand away and say, "That would be lovely.”

And Sam was going to kill him, but Dean was starving and did _not_ enjoy awkward chit chat. He nodded to a few people and just wandered off, not even looking at Sam because otherwise he'd never make it to the food.

He made a beeline for a familiar face, Taylor, over by the mini-quiches.

Taylor nodded in greeting. "Shouldn't you be meeting the neighbors?"

"Trying to avoid the clutches of elderly housewives," Dean told him. "Help me out here, man."

"What about Sam?"

"Sam's pretty much a cougar magnet." He looked over his shoulder, to where three women were gazing up adoringly at Sam already. There was a faint flush across his face and he was rubbing the palm of his hand against his thigh nervously. "Yep. He was lost the moment we rang the doorbell. Best stay here for a while."

"One man's cowardice is another man's salvation, that sort of thing?"

"Just about." Dean grabbed a beer from the bowl of ice on the table, twisted the cap off, and clinked the bottom of the bottle against Taylor's. He leaned back against the wall, looking back over at Sam.

Taylor swigged at his own drink, and looked at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "Nice threads."

"Yeah, Sam made me change. Said I looked too gay." He popped a few quiches in his mouth, and then said through the food, "I mean, what kind of world is this, a man can't even wear his favorite jeans without comment."

"I hear ya."

Dean loaded some vegetable chips and a few slices of cheese on a paper plate. "So where's that wife of yours?"

"Talking to Lynn Harveson," Taylor said, nodding to one corner. "Head of the housing community."

"Oh, right."

But something about the exchange rubbed Dean the wrong way. He couldn't put his finger on it for a second, the strange misstep in conversation, until he realized it was all in the way Taylor had answered him: Dean had asked about another man's wife and the dude hadn't missed a beat, hadn't squared his shoulders or glanced Dean's way defensively. There had been no male posturing whatsoever, in fact, so either the guy was as apathetic as he seemed or....

Or Dean was...not a threat. He experienced his first real moment of clarity since they'd arrived here, understanding how people were imagining he and Sam together, like, monogamous together. As in, sex together. Shared-showers, tongue-to-happy-trail together, not just windows-down, road-trip together.

"Oh God," he said, pieces of chips falling out of his mouth and onto his shirt. Where had that image even come from? Damn his overly-helpful and creative mind.

He brushed food off of him with the back of his hand, distractedly, and grabbed for another drink.

"So," Taylor said, terribly apropos. "How's the settled life?"

Dean cleared his throat.

"Fine," he said, trying to modulate his voice to sound like his world view hadn't just been upended.

Taylor must have read the vertigo on his face. "That bad?”

"No, no," Dean said. "It's going great. I mean, I love the guy.” He felt an honest-to-God heat blushing the back of his neck, and he glanced over at Sam out of habit. Then he had to look away. "It's just that Sam's a little antsy, I think. We've only been here a few days, and already he's taken up some weird hobbies. He keeps mentioning carpentry, like he wants to build a chair or some shit, and the other day I checked his internet history, and you know what he'd been surfing?"

"I'm guessing not porn?"

"No, man. That would be _normal_ , you know?" And even if it had been porn, it would have been _straight_ porn, Dean told himself firmly. Busty, Asian, not of the shared-Punnet square variety. "No...he was looking up how to braise—get this—vegetarian meat."

For the first time he saw some emotion on Taylor's face.

"And let me rephrase," Dean said, really trying for focus right now. "In case the horror of that didn't hit you the first time, this means he is planning to go to the store. He is planning to find the tofu chicken. He's going to buy it, with my hard-stolen money, by the way," and here he got the chuckle he'd been digging for. "He will then bring it home, stand around in the kitchen for a few hours trying to make some schmancy meal, and then he is going to feed it to me. For dinner." He gestured widely. "I mean what the hell, man?"

"Maybe it's not for him?" Taylor said. "Or maybe he's bored?"

Dean shook his head. "When _I_ get bored, I do something constructive, you know? Check coolant levels and replace gaskets. But Sammy—well, that kid is bad news when he's bored, I've seen it happen before. And this is the first time we've had a lot of free time in...hell, in forever. I shudder to think."

"What is it you said you guys do again?"

"Contracting mainly," Dean quickly replied. "It's surprisingly easy to find work."

"Hey, me too," Taylor said. "I've always thought that being self-employed, even if you're scrounging for quarters, is better than being dependent on someone. Other people's business, it just loads you down. I'd rather go out there and do things directly."

"Cheers to that." Dean clinked their beers together.

They drank in silence for a bit, watching the neighbors socialize. Dean found Sam in a second, towering over everyone, smiling down a few feet at a woman who had her hands on his bicep. He watched as one of the ladies chucked Sam in the chin. Sam, for his part, looked uncomfortably pleased.

"I spent a lot of my younger years not having control over a lot of things, you know?" Dean said. "Kinda situation that makes you want to be self-employed, I'll tell you that much."

He felt kind of pervy, like Sam knew what he'd been imagining from all the way over there. He could _not_ keep thinking about this. For one, they were somehow sharing a bed, which—How? How had this happened? It's just, the house had come fully furnished: dishes, blankets, fucking diaphanous curtains that Sam had lurked behind in the yard to surprise Dean when he'd sat down to breakfast yesterday afternoon. Yeah, the whole deal. The issue of sleeping arrangements hadn't even been discussed, they'd just gone to the bedroom and thrown their stuff in the closet, like it was their one motel room so it was only natural.

He was freaking out, but at least he didn't have to talk to the goodly tolerant people of the neighborhood. This was the best way to spend a social gathering like this one. Taylor was quiet at his side and Dean downed a couple cold ones and felt pretty at ease up until the point when a dark-haired, yoga-type moved over to their corner. She was about five-eight, with a perfect smile and great eyes.

"You know what," he said to Taylor. "I should probably get to my partnerly duties."

Taylor nodded and, excuses made, Dean got out of there, trailing along through happy couples and coming to a stop at Sam's elbow.

"Well this must be your young man," one of Sam's fanclub said.

"Yes," Sam said, throwing an arm around Dean's waist. Dean winced as Sam said, "Yes, this is."

"Oh, isn't he a looker!"

Dean gave her a tight smile and a wave. "Howdy."

He was about to duck out, quick as he came, maybe head to the bathroom where he could sit at the edge of the bath with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, but Sam palmed his hip even harder, like a warning. Dean went tense all over and thought distantly how job stress could kill you. This could be the time.

"Mrs. Pewitt—" Sam began.

"Oh call me Tabitha!"

Sam smiled, and continued. "Tabitha was just telling me that she's one of the homeowners who saw—" Sam looked to her. "—what were your words, exactly?"

"A woman," she said. "Standing in the moonlight in my backyard. I'm not one to believe such things, but I swear it was a ghost."

"You don't say?" Dean said, leaning into Sam so his grip would maybe let up a little.

"As clear as day," Mrs. Pewitt said. "It's a bit strange to look out your window and see someone just standing there. I didn't know what to think. She just looked so lost! So, I knocked on the glass to get her attention. When she looked up at me, it was like she was about to say something. I was far away, and wouldn't have been able to hear her anyway, so I waved to tell her I was coming down, but, before I did, she vanished!

"How strange," Dean said.

"Now, I know what you're thinking, but I hadn't even gone to bed yet. I'd been reading, so it couldn't have been a dream."

"Oh, let's not scare these boys with ghost stories," another woman said.

They let it go for now. Dean could feel Sam's reaction to the next question. "Now then, how did you boys meet?"

"Oh," Dean said, similarly thrown. He lowered his lashes and and tried for a smile to cover whatever other expression he was making. "Well, around."

"We met when we were children," Sam said, and tightened his grip on Dean again. "Our parents introduced us.”

"Well isn't that nice! It's like a fairy tale.”

"Magical,” Dean grit out.

"Have you boys had the punch?" a man offered.

"If you'll excuse us," Dean said. "I need to talk to my huggy bear here." He successfully pulled Sam into a corner and leaned in close. "What the hell?"

Sam ducked his head to Dean's ear, crunching loudly on a carrot stick while he muttered, "I know, right? She just started in on the story, without me even having to ask. Also, punch, block parties; tell me this doesn't feel like a cult to you."

Dean just looked at him. "Not that, Sam. Our _parents_ introduced us? What would _ever_ possess you to say that?"

"It's true, isn't it?" Sam's mouth twitched. "Funny, just the smallest bit? Kind of dark humor in there? No?"

"You know, it's moments like these...."

Sam ate some more carrots, and nodded at a man who passed. Dean could see it sometimes, how Sam was just the resouled version of that other dude. It became apparent in an instant, inverted and suddenly clear like a magic eye puzzle. He wasn't going to say that out loud, of course. He only sighed and said, "I hate you so much sometimes."

Sam shook his head, giving him a look that said he knew Dean was full of shit. "I know you do, man."

There was no question that he and Sam were the hit of the party. Lots of grandparent types hovered around Sam and asked him about what fine young lads did at their age. Dean told all five non-knock knock jokes that he could recall, even though there had to have been more somewhere in his memory. Conversation wasn't actually all that stilted, so that when things were winding down a couple of hours later Sam was smiling without an edge and Dean had the pleasant warm feeling that came from people being genuinely nice to them and not in the least suspicious.

When it was time to leave, they shook a few hands, said their goodbyes, and left with Leila and Taylor.

"Listen," Taylor said on the walk home. "Let's have dinner some time."

"Yeah, come over to ours," Leila said. "We can do it right, or maybe skip the dinner and just get to the drinks."

They reached the sidewalk in front of their houses. The porch lamps were on, illuminating the brick paths and casting light across their twin, manicured lawns.

"Read my mind," Dean said.

  


  
Castiel shrunk to the size of a human being, molecules scattering to avoid and then envelop the essence of his Grace. He hit the ground walking, and pushed the doors of the bar wide.

The bartender nodded his way.

Castiel lifted his chin in response. "Four pints of Angel City Pils."

"We're out," the bartender said. "You drank it all the last time."

Castiel's gaze was already fixed on the shade of Henriksen who was seated at the far table. "I'll have Franziskaner then," he amended. "It is made by monks, blessed in their abbeys. I can't be sure, but in some way I believe it purifies my Earthly vessel."

"Whatever you say." The bartender poured four pints from the tap and slid them across the bar moments later. Castiel put a crisp twenty on the counter and moved on.

When he had put a hundred dollar bill down last time and tried to leave the change, there'd been a slight uproar, and it was neither convenient nor stealthy to carry change. Coins rattled in the pockets and gave him away when he would have otherwise entered near silently, only the sound of feathers to mark his entrance, a bit of the heavenly realm unfurling invisibly into thin air.

"Victor," Castiel pronounced when he reached the table. Henriksen looked up at the name.

"Why are we here, Castiel?" he asked.

"It would seem that our purpose is to...track down the Winchesters, using our joint skills. Such as they are," Castiel said. "We have a relationship that is built solely around our search for them."

"Man, you're worse than my high school girlfriend."

Castiel affected the American human non-verbal behavior of confusion. He felt the small cleft appear between his eyebrows, like he was being poked between the eyes by a particularly handsy cupid. Jimmy Novak seemed to have been a man rarely confused, because the muscles hadn't been well-developed previously, but after observing Sam Winchester, Castiel had learned quickly.

Furrowing his brow thus, he said, "I fail to see how Laura Marshall relates to our partnership."

"How did you—" Henriksen stopped short, and waved away the thought, as if the depths of Castiel's possible abilities were too dangerous to even begin to plumb. "Anyway, that's what I'm talking about, you using the words 'partner' and 'relationship' when we've known each other all of two weeks."

Castiel continued to display consternation.

"Your sense of time is probably better than my own," he said. Indeed, the trees were still bare outside, which seemed to denote a continuance of November. "And I thank you for pointing out error in my terminology. Others...fail to do so, and I only realize my intent is misunderstood when I am given lectures on maintaining personal space."

"When did that happen?"

"With Dean Winchester," Castiel said. "Apparently it is perceived as homosexual intent when one man tells another that they share a profound bond, and then leans towards him at any opportunity to experience the closeness of said bond in a physical manner."

Henriksen shook his head, not touching that one. "Anyway. You planning on getting me out of here at any point soon?"

Castiel considered this for a moment, and then said, "I will see what I can do."

  


  
There was one night where Dean woke to the bed moving. His first thought was: _earthquake_ , but after a second, when he'd woken up a bit more, he thought _duh, monster under the bed_ and quickly rolled to his knees on the dark mattress.

A flailing arm hit him in the face. He amended his take on the situation once again; it was Sam, thrashing around in the sheets.

"Hey," he barked out. He caught Sam's wrists and leaned awkwardly over him, bearing down.

If this had been some creature, something evil, he would've known exactly how to incapacitate it, no problem. But when it came to Sam, all rules he'd learned always seemed to shelve themselves without Dean's say-so. It's why Sam'd managed to take him down a few times during training when they were kids, and why Dean got an elbow to the neck now, before he wrestled him into a proper hold.

Sam was shaking under him. When he opened his eyes, Dean could have sworn it wasn't moonlight reflected in them. There was something reddish, for only a fraction of a second, but it was there, eerie like fire. It was gone quick as it came, and Sam quieted under his hands.

"Dean," he breathed. He sounded surprised, relieved even.

Dean let him go, rolling back to his side to flip on the light.

Sam looked exhausted. He was covering his face with both hands, breathing slowing breaths in his threadbare, green t-shirt that said North County Animal Shelter across the front. Where had he gotten it? Probably a thrift store somewhere.

Dean rode the silence for a second, until Sam turned onto his side toward him, tucking an arm under his pillow.

"Remember anything?" Dean asked. Then backtracked. "I mean, wait—don't answer that."

They were quiet for a time. Eventually, Sam closed his eyes. His face was smooth, hair a complete mess and his mouth was slightly open. He looked carefully put together, sleep-softened.

"It's weird," Dean said finally. "This is sort of the opposite of those psychic dreams of yours, how in some ways I was always hoping you _would_ remember everything. At least it was useful to us."

"Didn't do a lot of good. In the long run, you know?" Sam yawned, pressing his face briefly into the pillow. "Sorry I woke you."

"I can get back to sleep these days. But you—well, by my count you haven't had a good track record since I came to pick you up to find dad. Even before then, right? Portentous dreams way back when, even in college."

"Yeah, I've never been big on sleeping."

Dean turned onto his back, half-awake, hands snugged behind his head.

"Tell you something, though," he said. "Something you're not gonna like, kind of a dick thing to say."

Sam made a _hmm_ noise of polite interest, like _fine, tell me_ , like he was falling back to sleep. Dean didn't buy it. He suspected Sam would be up all night.

"I'm jealous," Dean said. "I mean, obviously not completely, but when Death said he was gonna put up a wall in your head, build you a blockade to dam it all up, I thought, just for a second: why couldn't I get that?"

Sam was quiet, only two feet away. Dean rolled over onto his front, burrowing down.

"Things you never forget, man. Be careful what you put in your head, because it'll be in there forever, you know? Anyway."

He was drifting off with the light on, sunk heavy under the fluffy duvet that came with the house, when Sam asked, "What happened to Adam?"

"Death gave me a choice," Dean mumbled.

"Dean. How—"

"Choice was one or the other; wasn't a choice."

Sam breathed in deep beside him, and Dean fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

> Location, location, location. I'm a developer.  
>  Purgatory is vast, underutilized, and hell-  
>  adjacent, and I want it.  
>  Crowley, "Family Matters"  
> 

  
They were having cocktail hour next door. Sam was carrying the conversation again, because hell if this sort of socializing didn't always turn to talking about chick stuff, _relationship_ stuff. He ducked questions about their long-term romance while Dean tried to stave off an embarrassing death by boredom with one foot up on the ottoman, staring out the window, his mind glazed over.

He had mown the lawn that afternoon and then raked fallen leaves into piles for Sam to load up into trash bags. He'd sat on the back steps while the far sky went the quiet salmon color of five PM in suburbia, nothing but the distant sounds of traffic on the highway. The evening had felt young and promising until he'd remembered what day it was, that they'd promised to go make friendly with the neighbors. He and Sam could have spent the evening doing anything. They could have concentrated on the case, such as it was, or played poker using pennies for chips. Instead, Dean was expiring on the couch.

"We've been through a lot together," Leila was explaining. She glanced fondly at Taylor whose grip was loose on his beer, eyes trained somewhere in the middle distance. "I was really messed up for a while. There were a lot of issues I didn't think we'd be able to get through, but he stuck with me, and I really appreciate that."

Sam nodded in a kind of open understanding. "We've had our share of issues, as well."

Dean smiled tightly and thought of how he'd doubted Sam in the past, how Sam had doubted him, what little good it had done them.

When Leila reached for a blanket, Sam said, "Dean. Why don't you go light the fire." He sounded genuinely concerned, as if they didn't know from experience that a human could withstand extreme temperatures for at least twelve hours and make it out perfectly fine. There had been that one time in the Rockies....

Dean arched an eyebrow his way, but saw the request for what it was, that Sam had noticed him withering away out of boredom and had jumped on the excuse for him to burn things.

Crouching by the fireplace, he waved off Leila's offer to do it herself. He crumpled up some old newspaper from a pile and threw it in, then grabbed a few logs from the pile.

"Make sure you don't drop the wood onto the hearth," Sam instructed him. "It could crack the tile."

"All right, Samantha." When he cranked on the gas and tossed in a match, the flames whooshed up hot like it was any old grave.

Taylor laughed over in his armchair, first sound he'd made in ten minutes. "You let him call you that?"

Sam said, "No," kind of horrified, just as Dean stood and brushed off his hands, saying, "I call him whatever I want."

Sam looked betrayed.

"What? I do." He fell back onto the couch, innocently slinging an arm around his shoulders just to play it right.

"Speaking of women's names," Leila said. "Did you guys meet Kristen McKinley and her husband the other night?"

Dean felt Sam's shrug against him. "I don't think we met them."

"Dean almost did," Taylor said. "She came over to say hello, but he ducked out." He gave Dean a smug look. "I told her you were afraid of women."

Sam laughed heartily.

"Shut up," Dean told him, but kept it pleasant because Sam was laughing a whole lot lately. He turned back to Taylor. "Was she the pretty brunette? Dark eyes? Nice smile?"

"That's her."

His hand went to his pocket out of habit, even though he didn't have his cell on him. "To be honest, she kinda reminded me of someone." Sam tensed under his arm, so Dean pinched him in the shoulder, and said, "Ex-girlfriend, you know. Automatically avoid the situation."

He was thankful they were around other people; no way he wanted to hear another of Sam's apology spiels.

"Anyway," Leila said. "She was telling me that she and her husband woke up to the sound of screaming one night, coming from downstairs.”

"Screaming?” Sam innocuously leaned forward on the couch. Maybe Dean should have stuck around to talk to her after all. "Did they follow the sound?”

"They looked everywhere, but no one was in the house!”

"Leila,” Taylor said, a warning in his voice.

"You're right. You're right, it's stupid.”

Dean tried to inject that sort of conspiratorial tone that lent innocence to his question. "Do you believe in ghosts?”

Taylor nodded. "Leila here loves ghost stories.”

"Oh quiet. You do, too. Creepy houses, though, and he cries like a baby."

"Only the once,” Taylor defended himself. "Anyway, the woman's husband was talking about your car, said he hadn't seen anything that pretty since an old Mustang he had in the 70s."

"Well, tell him thanks for me," Dean said. "It was our dad's."

Sam flinched, only the smallest bit.

"I mean," Dean said. "You know, _my_ dad. Sam just called him that too, before he—well. Well, anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Leila sat forward again. "What kind of car'd you drive before, Sam?"

Sam scrunched up his face, like he was about to lie, but then came out with, "I had a Dodge Charger?"

Dean choked on his drink. Before the conversation could continue, he waved a hand, cutting the line of questioning short. "But it got totaled, so. Not worth talking about."

"What?" Sam frowned at him. Dean still wasn't clear on just how much had Sam remembered from the past year and a half, but there was no way they could talk about this here.

" _Dude_ ," he said. Even if they hadn't grown up liars by necessity, Dean thought, they still would have developed this secret sibling language, would have been able to communicate important things with just a look, an inflection, like _Sam, you did not just tell the truth there_ or _you forgot a year and a half, remember?_

Sam's eyes didn't fill with tears, but it was a close thing. "Oh, right," he said. "Obviously. Totaled, how embarrassing.”

The conversation veered off again while Dean reeled. On the one hand, it wasn't his fault Sam couldn't get at what was in his head, but he felt bad just the same. He wanted to bury those memories deep—the Campbells, the fucking douche-mobile Sam had pulled up in.

He watched Sam talk. If Sam noticed his scrutiny he ignored it.

Despite Sam probably being pissed about the car, though, Dean felt a sort of tentative elation, because, all evidence to the contrary, he was the luckiest person in the world. Sam had his soul back. The cushions were dipping because Sam was here, alive and leaning into him heavy like the most comfortable of weights, and Dean was getting used to it, kind of loved it. That morning, he'd woken up to Sam pressed all along his side, head on his chest so that Dean was breathing in hair.

And staring at Sam like this? Well, it wasn't suspect for once. Dean had an arm slung across the back of the couch and was examining Sam's profile while he spoke, but the neighbors wouldn't even think that sort of behavior was weird. Dean was supposed to hover close, protect Sam from everything, was supposed to watch him with that proud expression he sometimes felt tugging itself onto his face when he didn't give it conscious thought.

"So, what did you do before this?" Leila was asking when Dean joined the conversation again. He swigged at his beer, watching Sam play normal. "You mentioned you were traveling?"

"Spent time with my grandfather," Sam said and Dean didn't choke on his drink this time, but it was a near thing. Sam just carried on. "He and I went on a few hunting trips, but it was a little rough."

"That's great he's still alive, though," Taylor said.

"And kicking," Sam agreed.

"Gotta be thankful for what you have. What were you all hunting?"

Dean just looked incredulously Sam's way, waiting on the answer along with the rest of them. Sam had his honest face on. Shit.

"Oh, all sorts of things," he said. "Last year, there was an overabundance of wolves in the Pacific Northwest, and, maybe it sounds inhumane, but it really wasn't safe to have that level of overpopulation of predators we were seeing. Not environmentally sustainable."

"Yep," Dean cut in, smacking Sam on the thigh. "Sam here's a real environmentalist."

There was a silence during which he drank the rest of his beer and shot Sam a furtive look that was not returned.

"I go hunting myself," Taylor told him. Leila rolled her eyes at Dean, as if to say, _oh, boys_ and Dean shrugged a shoulder in acknowledgment. "Maybe I could take you out sometime."

"Just tell me when.”

Taylor looked his way. "You hunt, Dean?”

Dean scoffed. "Do I hunt?”

"So you do?”

"He comes with me,” Sam said. "But he complains a lot and tends to get hurt.”

Dean turned. _Traitor_. "Do not!”

"Man, the amount of times you've needed to get stitches...? He's really klutzy,” he told them.

"That is a freaking lie, and you know it—"

  


  


They left after eleven. Dean went quickly up their own driveway and Sam trailed just behind.

They didn't bother with the light in the entryway but flicked on the one in the kitchen. Dean opened the fridge with a rattle of beer bottles and Sam leaned against the counter with one arm crossed over his chest.

"I had a car?" he finally asked.

To Dean, it felt like old news. He grabbed a bag of lunch meat and ripped it open with his teeth. "Yup."

He ate four slices of bologna. Sam screwed up his mouth, working things out. "And you let me total it? You must have really hated it not to fix it."

"An angel fell on it out a three storey window, okay Sam?" He slammed the fridge door. "Divine intervention; who was I to argue?”

He began preparing what one in a real home might call a nightcap, three fingers of whiskey that he'd subsumed into his regular bedtime routine.

"Dean, I just want to say—”

"We done here?"

He put the bottle down on the counter with an ominous thunk and sloshing of liquid, but he didn't pick up the tumbler, because part of him felt that stretch of air, the tension which meant Sam was about to do something, probably something physical, like grab him by the shoulder or get up in his space.

He finally turned and, sure enough, Sam met Dean's gaze with skepticism. Dean had only to say the magic word, that verbal key which would unlock any potential conversation, would paint any elephant in the room bright pink and unavoidable. He knew that if he said, "What?" or maybe just Sam's name it would all come crashing down around them.

So he made a choice, didn't go there. Things stayed grounded in place.

"All right there, creepo," he said instead, and, downing the Walker in one, pressed his empty glass into Sam's hand and pushed past.

  


  
They jimmied the lock on the McKinleys' gate the next night and did a thorough sweep of the yard. Dean reflected how so much of their jobs ended up being bitch work.

When the EMF reader came to life, squealing like crazy, Dean looked around for Sam. He spotted him with effort, a dark figure stooped over by the tall tree.

"Dude." Dean's quiet voice carried far too well. He waved the EMF. "Stop petting every damn cat you see and help me out."

"I hadn't gotten to pet it yet,” Sam whispered back, but he jogged over to where Dean was crouched in the midnight rose bushes. "You got something? Where're the remains?”

"It sounds like they're...." Dean waved the ex-walkie-talkie again, avoiding thorns. "There.”

"In the flowerbed?”

"Could be something buried. Something left behind.”

Sam grabbed the shovel. He dug into the soft earth, scooping out dirt until the metal tip hit something.

Dean glanced around as Sam squatted down and pulled the small object out of the ground. It felt like just about anyone could hear them, not to mention see them. The windows were blue with moonlight.

Sam shook the thing off. Hard to tell, but it was round and probably leather, like a bracelet.

"That's gotta be the thing that set it off,” Dean said. "At least it's a start.”

"Wait,” Sam held up a hand. "Let's just torch this by itself, not the whole stretch of dirt. A little too conspicuous.”

He walked softly to a spot near the side of the house. Dean took a moment to attempt to right the stretch of garden they'd completely wrecked, shoving the stalky bush they'd uprooted back into the ground half-heartedly and whacking the soil with the flat of the shovel to flatten it. The patting of metal to dirt sounded eerily firm in the otherwise silent yard.

Errand complete as it ever would be, he went to Sam's side. The wind didn't pick up when Sam tossed the bracelet onto the gravel. There were no angry spirits bursting out of the air to stop them, no shrieking, only the small, gray cat who scampered over to them to investigate.

Sam took out the flask of lighter fluid, emptied it out over the bracelet, and then stepped back into the shadows. Dean flicked his Zippo open and lit it off his jeans.

"Here goes nothing." He tossed it in.

The bracelet was engulfed in fire in an instant, the flames going blue and chemical. Then came a second whoosh from behind them and a resulting screech. They whirled, looking for some human ghost. They were just in time to see the tabby go up in supernatural fire.

"Well," Sam said as they sprinted out the opened gate, clicking it shut behind them and running out onto the sidewalk. "Last time I touch a stray cat.”

"At least we saved them the embarrassment of being the neighbors haunted by the ghost of Felix."

Sam jogged past him, an eerie figure in the moonlight, putting on speed as Dean sprinted up behind him.

"Stop showing off," Dean grumbled.

Sam ran backwards, kicking up his knees awkwardly. "Not your fault I have half a foot on you."

"Will we ever _stop_ talking about this? It's three inches at most, you've just got longer legs. And neck. You're like a giraffe, but without the charisma."

They jogged back to their house, which stood squat and strange in the moonlight. Dean unlocked the front door with honest-to-God house keys and thought that this case was shaping up to be a bust. Other than the ghost cat, the EMF had blinked steadily over a hundred backyards to date, revealing nothing that might bring them closer to cleaning out all the death echoes.

  


  


  


"Look, buddy,” Henriksen said. "I have been hunting these guys for years. I know what they're like, I know what they're capable of.”

"I, too, know what they are capable of.” Castiel downed a beer. "I dove into the fiery pits of Hell, avoiding the net of the damned, to raise Dean from Perdition. Recently, I felt inside Sam Winchester's chest cavity, the tattered remains of his soul. Your suggestion for finding Sam and Dean is not expedient enough."

Henriksen's expression hardened. "Well, yours isn't legal."

Castiel met his gaze. "I believe we are at an impasse.”

"In any case," Henriksen said. "Why is it that we never seem to meet outside of this bar?"

Castiel took a moment before answering. He looked around the dark bar, taking in the dulled human faces. Lost souls, all of them.

"This building was built over the burn site of a police building."

"And?"

"Some good men died here," Castiel told him, but there was no recognition on Henriksen's face.

"Good men die all the time," Henriksen said. "Why's this place any different?"

"Our business is best conducted here,” Castiel finally said. "Tell me, Victor Henriksen, what do you know about Purgatory?"

  


  


  


Dean was down on one knee in the hot grass, screwing with the sprinklers.

"Stop screwing with the sprinklers, Dean."

He didn't look up, just twisted a little more with a wrench, jerking the head so that it was on right. He had never done this, per se, but he had a sense about these things. He said, "Man's gotta take care of his pipes, Sammy."

He smirked up at the porch to where Sam had his arms crossed on the railing, hands dangling over the edge. He had hair hanging in his eyes so he had to shake it out of the way. He'd stopped cutting his own hair in the mirror a few years back.

"Yeah, well, I think I'm going to head out. Thought I'd check out some of the town archives." Sam gave Dean a pointed look. "Don't break anything while I'm gone."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean gave the sprinkler one last twist.

Water sprayed out then, hard, hitting him in a fan of cold wetness that scraped over his bare arms and all down the front of his shirt and jeans.

"Aughgh." He yanked the wrench with desperate jerks of his wrist, but when he just got sprayed harder he jumped up and sprinted towards the house, the sprinkler smacking him from behind. As a hunter, he'd learned to choose his battles, knew when to fight the good fight and when to just fucking run.

He stopped over by the door, wiping water from his eyes. He grabbed his sodden t-shirt by the hem and yanked it off, his body cooling in the air. Sam snickered in the shade.

"Told you," was all he had time to say before Dean grabbed him by the back of the neck and smooshed the wet t-shirt all over his smug face.

When Sam stepped on his foot and flipped him over the railing, Dean landed like a cat, but he did ultimately end up with Sam's hand solid on the back of his head and a knee to his lower back.

"Get outta here," Dean grumbled, some grass sticking up his nose uncomfortably.

Sam rolled off him and got to his feet. "I am as a god!"

"Gloating is not attractive," Dean reminded him, but reached for an arm up anyway.

  


  
Thing about neighbors, was once you start being social you couldn't exactly stop.

After Sam took off to Cincinnati, Dean was left to his own devices, expecting a quiet afternoon. He had fixed the sprinkler head with some understandable delay, so he changed clothes and wandered downstairs.

He leaned against a kitchen counter and ate a Slim Jim. The house felt expansive and impermanent, with a nice square backyard and a couple of rooms he'd fill with his shit if they really were looking to settle in.

He had just sat down in the living room with the intent of starting in on a six pack and hunting down reruns of some of the classics, when there was a knock at the front door.

He fumbled at the remote and grabbed the .45 he kept wedged in the couch. "Coming!" he yelled.

"Dean?" There was a clacking of heels to hardwood floor. Leila. He pushed the gun back between the cushions and slung a foot onto the coffee table, nearly kicking Sam's book to the floor along with the beer and a magazine.

Sure enough, Leila came through from the foyer in jeans and what Lisa had called a messy pony tail. "Hey, Dean," she said. "I just wanted to come say hi, see if you were settling in all right. We had a great time the other night."

"Well, hey." He waved. "Thanks for asking. Yeah, we're settling in just fine."

"Good to hear." There was a silence which she took in stride. She moved around to look at the TV. "What are you watching?"

"Oh, I'm just," Dean said, gesturing uselessly to the screen. "Channel surfing."

He didn't exactly motion for her to sit, but she did anyway, crossing a leg under herself on the opposite side of the couch where Sam had hidden a bottle of holy water. "Oh, Dr. Sexy? I've never actually watched a whole episode, but Taylor loves this show."

"Right." Dean scratched at the back of his neck. "How'd you get in, anyway? Pick the lock or something?"

Leila laughed and took a beer from the table. She twisted the top off and swigged half of it like a pro, while Dean, at something of a loss, turned the volume up on the TV and settled back to watch.

This wasn't his favorite episode but it was a good one. Due to an error in paperwork, two people were in line for the same heart transplant. Their families crowded tearfully in the waiting room, both under the impression that their loved one would be going into surgery. To make matters more complex, the heart in question arrived late, just as both patients were going into critical condition, because the donor truck was stopped in a traffic jam. Dr. Sexy had to make the call, the difficult choice between two patients who were in dire need. Dean felt a lot of empathy for the character; the only job that came even close to hunting was being a doctor.

Watching TV like this was nice. Peaceful. It didn't last.

"Where's Sam?" Leila asked after the third commercial break.

"Out," Dean said. "Grocery shopping."

"I see how it is. He does all the work while you sit on the couch?"

Dean shrugged. "Guy eats about six meals a day, he's gotta pull his own weight."

"I'm sure you get this all the time, but you guys seem great together,” she said, turning on the couch. Dean had a feeling they weren't going to be watching the end of the episode. "You've always been this close?"

Dean thought he'd opt for honesty, because why the hell not?

"Had our ups and downs," he said. "I mean, who doesn't, right?"

She nodded, looking sympathetic. The only people he'd bitched to about this were a stranger here or there at a bar when he was hunting alone, and to Sam himself. Now here Leila was, for all intents and purposes a complete stranger, uninvested. Dean suddenly wanted to tell her, had to tell someone.

"He left to go to college," he said. "I wanted to go with, but I was pretty angry. And I was working already, so...couldn't really leave the job."

She nodded for him to go on. A commercial for Crest whitening strips played in the background.

"We saw each other once while he was away. After that, I spent two years trying not to call him. Thought I'd let him grow up, be his own person."

It was ridiculous, really—that twinge he got where he knew his soul to be. After everything, too. After Hell, after some giant loss of faith and the grind of building that faith up again, all that and it was the history between him and Sam that really hurt. Those little human moments were insignificant in the face of all the rest, but were engraved in Dean's memory like nothing else.

"What happened then?" Leila asked.

"One day I just couldn't do it without him, didn't want to. You know how it is," he told her. "You're twenty-six years old and everything feels like the end of the world."

She nodded, drinking her beer. Dean rested his own against his thigh, thinking of how his life could have been different. If he'd've had kids himself, he might have sat around telling bedtimes stories like this, paring histories down to basic facts out of their necessary context, tales of his brother the best thing he knew to say.

"I drove all the way to California,” he continued. "It took me two days, I didn't sleep. Showed up at his apartment at one in the morning and almost got the teeth kicked outta me. And the rest is history." He tilted his head back against the couch. "Feels like a long time ago, but I still can't believe he came with me."

"Why not?"

"He had everything he could have wanted, right there, but he still left. Not a day goes by I don't wonder what it would have been like for him if I'd've just let him be."

They shared a quiet moment as the shadow of their lives seemed to flicker up against the wall, but Dean knew it was just lights of the show as the credits rolled, the curtains drawn.

When Sam came back, he had a stack of papers under one arm and was eating an apple. Dean made to stand up, make excuses to leave the room, but Sam crossed to the couch and sat in the circle of Dean's arm, like it was nothing at all.

He turned to grin right in Dean's face. "Talking about me?"

"What's there to talk about?" Dean said, dismissive. "And stop smirking at me like that; cheeky doesn't suit you."

"You love it when I'm cheeky." Dean, for a fact, did, but he was suddenly tired. He shifted in his seat, trying to pull himself free of memories and regret.

"No groceries?" Leila asked.

"Left 'em in the trunk," Sam told her.

Dean smoothed his hand from Sam's shoulder to his neck to hold him there, because Dean could play the part, too. He felt protective in a different way than usual, kind of inexplicably sad, as Sam rested huge and warm against his side.

"Well," Leila said, returning her attention to the TV. She reached for another beer and tucked her feet under her, settling in. "Lucky for us, looks like they're having a marathon."

  


  
The sun was high and bright in the sky and the day stretched out new and untried. Dean was waist deep under his baby in the driveway, arms stuck up in the undercarriage, when he saw feet approaching. Sam came to a stop by the front wheel and kicked him in the shin.

"I think I'm gonna head out,” Dean heard him say. "You almost done there?”

"Just finishing up,” Dean muttered. A drop of sweat trickled down his hairline. He wiped it away with his forearm. He tightened the ratchet he was holding one last time and then slid out at Sam's feet.

Sam looked him over, shaking his head as Dean stood and wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. He could only guess what Sam was thinking. "You sure you don't want me to come with?"

"Nah, I got it. Just didn't finish up in the library yesterday before I got bored."

"Bored?" Dean said. "Sammy _bored_ at a _library_."

"It's a medical library, and I'm reading medical reports on burn victims."

"All right, hold your horses. Gotta get some stuff out of the trunk.”

He unlocked the trunk and grabbed a few guns to clean, wedging two in the waist of his jeans and just holding onto the third.

"Dean, c'mere.” He looked up at the tone.

Sam was just leaning against the car, but his voice had sounded urgent. Dean was four feet away, about to go inside. They looked at each other. Dean waited, but the explanation never came. "What?”

"Come here," Sam enunciated, pasting a fake smile on his face and spreading his arms a little.

"What? No way, man." He was instantly suspicious. Because yeah, they touched sometimes, grabbing each other by the shirts or splaying a hand to the chest in passing, but a hug? That was for moments of death and rebirth. It made sense, then, that Dean felt his stomach drop at the way Sam was looking at him expectantly like he was asking Dean to just lay one on him. It was a Pavlovian response.

But despite the worry, Dean was inching forward anyway. Never could say no to Sam.

"The woman across the street, I think she saw the guns.” Sam still had the fake smile on his face, but now Dean understood. Blowing cover wouldn't kill them, but they'd sure as hell be kicked out of here, which would make finishing up this case a heck of a lot more difficult and a big to-do they should probably try and avoid.

"Right,” Dean said. He moved forward with intent.

His mind was firmly set on creating a diversion, and the easiest way to do that was to go big. Before he'd thought about it, before he realized Sam probably was angling for a short squeeze, some small show of affection to wave like a colorful distraction, Dean'd hooked an arm around Sam's neck and had stepped in flush against him to give the lady what she'd expect to see, less guns, more gay, like this was Hollywood and theirs was a love that was true, troubled only by the daily sort of trials and tribulations, like the dirty smearing of grease across skin where they touched and how pissed Dean was going to be when he saw Sam's ass pressed against the car door had smudged up the new wax job.

Everything seemed still, warm, as he pushed a kiss to the corner of Sam's mouth, out here in view of anyone that might be doing yard work or jogging.

It felt normal, kind of sweet, not at all horrifying. A car passed. Sam made a quiet noise that Dean didn't have time to question just then and put his hands tentatively to Dean's waist, pulling him closer to make it believable. Dean was experiencing it all like a play-by-play, present and removed at once, noting how they both tipped their faces automatically to make it more of a kiss, mouths lightly lingering together. The gun in Dean's hand was pressed between their chests, and he could feel Sam's heartbeat through the back of his fingers.

"One," he breathed against Sam's mouth, Sam breathing against his. "Two, three."

Job done, he backed off as naturally as he could. He tossed Sam the keys along with a flippant "have a good day, darlin," real loud, aiming it at the car instead of Sam, because that would be just too much.

He looked across the street, and waved in a "howdy neighbor" sort of gesture. The woman smiled and waved, and then returned to watering her roses.

"Yeah, you too," he heard Sam say, but Dean didn't look back.

He made it inside, imagining Sam slotting the keys into the lock coolly and driving off without a second thought, replaying how Sam's hands had flexed at his hips and how he'd felt the brief fan of Sam's eyelashes on his cheek.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to pass out for a while on the couch.

  


  


Four AM found Dean in the study shoving clippings around on the desktop, lamplight casting a moody circle on half of what he was doing.

He heard a padding of feet in the hall, socks on wood. When he turned in the chair, Sam was standing in the doorway, scrubbing the heel of a hand at his eyes.

"Rise and shine."

Sam made a grunting noise. Dean gave him the once over, made sure he was all there: socked feet, flannel pajama pants, white v-neck.

"Nice hair." Dean had once thought of it as sleepy hair, a term which still persisted in his mind but which would never be uttered aloud. "What are you doing up?"

"It's four in the morning." Sam shuffled into the room. "What are _you_ doing up?"

Dean shrugged. All day he'd been having these gritty, black and white flashbacks of breathing against his brother's mouth, their chests pressed together and the weird smell of spit, Sam's hands at his hips. But that was neither here nor there.

"Couldn't sleep," he said.

"Find anything?"

He moved so Sam could lean over the desk, check out what he'd made of the clippings.

"Betty Oswald," Sam read.

"Thirty-five years old," Dean said. "Head of marketing. She's one of the ones who died in the fire, and fits the description we got the other night at the block party."

Sam was frowning.

"What?"

"I don't know, Dean."

"You think we shouldn't do it?"

"Of course we should, once we know how, of course. It's just...it's just sad. It doesn't seem like she's a violent ghost, not really. Just an echo. She's probably confused and alone, just trying to interact with the living."

"Yeah." Dean pushed the clipping aside so that Betty Oswald's face was no longer visible. "But a ghost's a ghost, right? And even if she's non-violent, that's just not natural. Gotta waste 'er."

A kind of silence stretched between them, taut, ready to snap. Sam turned to lean against the desk.

"Bobby called me a few hours ago," he said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Asked me for an incantation he'd forgotten to bring with him. The music was playing really loud in the background. Rufus even said hi."

"Sounds like they're having a good time."

"Yeah." Sam picked at a hangnail, one arm crossed over his middle.

Dean tried to keep his eyes trained on the papers on the desk but the silence stretched and he snuck another peek. Now was the time to really cement some walls in his own head, because looking at Sam like this, looking at him he wanted to...he wanted to stand up right then, and hold him against the desk, try it again when no one was watching and see where it took them.

"What was that earlier?" Sam asked. "By the car?"

Okay, maybe not. Twist in his gut said Dean was not ready for any sort of conversation that addressed this topic. "That lady was watching, and you were all, 'Quick, do something'."

"I didn't mean go that far, man," Sam said. Of course he hadn't, Dean had been the one to press up close.

He felt sick at himself. "What? Didn't wanna give 'em a show?"

Sam frowned at him. "It's never been about that, Dean. It's never been about what other people think."

"Selfish!" Dean tried to joke, but that old guilt was wrenching up like bile.

Sam moved to stand directly in front of him, between him and the desk, wedged himself right in there so Dean's knees were pressed against his, so that Dean had to take notice.

"Dean."

But Dean was a coward, couldn't even look his own brother in the face.

Instead, he put his hands to Sam's waist, thumbs finding hip bones through thin fabric. He wanted to press his face into Sam's stomach, rub his cheek against him and nose his bellybutton so Sam said something outraged, laughed or shoved him away, and then they could wrestle it out, maybe never talk about it again.

He got as far as the stubble to soft cotton part, couldn't believe he'd even done it, what was he thinking, before Sam ran a hand back through his short hair, fingers moving against soft strands, the gel crunchy but relaxed now that it was nearly dawn the next day. Dean went still, trying to think of anything he could possibly do in this situation.

"Sam, uh...."

When he looked up, though, Sam took his face in both hands, leaned in, and kissed him.

Dean half stood into it, but Sam urged him down at the shoulder, sucking softly at Dean's bottom lip and then licking against the top. He smoothed both hands over Dean's shoulders and pushed him firmly back in the chair.

After a millisecond's hesitation, Dean pulled Sam down into the kiss with a rough hand to the back of his neck like he'd been imagining all day. He opened to Sam slow, breathing when he could, licking against Sam's tongue and tipping back in the chair so it creaked under them. He felt himself relaxing for the first time in years, caught in some dream state and splaying his legs while his fingers curled against Sam's scalp in his hair, everything quiet and cool in the world save Sam's hot breathing against his mouth.

Meanwhile, he didn't help Sam settle at all, just let him fumble around like a dork trying to get a knee in edgewise in the chair or whatever it was he was trying to accomplish, nearly tipping them over backwards. The whiskey, the breach of personal bubble, lots of other justifications—Dean's head was swimming with them.

And whiskey did not taste good with toothpaste.

"Minty," he groaned nonsensically when he finally pulled away an inch to breathe.

"At least I brush my teeth." Sam was leaning down over him, talking into his mouth. The chair creaked again in a pedestrian sort of protest beneath them. They were going to break everything, Dean could already tell. "Fucking move, will you, I'm trying to—"

"Don't push me around." He bit Sam's lower lip and then used the moment to stand for real this time, shoving in to exist overly close. Sam went with it, smoothing his hands up Dean's forearms to elbows, pulling Dean against him like it didn't matter which way they did this so long as they were doing it.

He leaned back a little when Sam tried to dip his head in for another kiss, making himself snap out of it. He poked Sam in the chest and looked him in the eyes from up close to hold him accountable.

"Incest is hot and all," he said, a joke which would always, always fall flat. "But what are we even—"

"I don't care what anyone else thinks," Sam said fiercely, pulling Dean closer. He bit at Dean's jaw and Dean went hot all over with Sam mouthing over his stubble, hands gripping his forearms. "You can't ask me to care."

"I guess that's not what this is about," Dean had to concede, although of course he was half-dazed, tipping his head back a bit, but in full control, he told himself.

Sam looked at him gently, like he'd done something right. Dean got all queasy by proxy, like he always did at the sight of it, because this foray into chick territory meant Sam would want to _talk_ about it.

But instead of saying anything, Sam held him at the elbows and kissed the thoughts right out of him, hot press of his tongue and Dean rubbing in closer.

And the fact that Sam had a good four inches on him was becoming all kinds of apparent, seeing as he was jutting hard up against Dean's abs. The fabric of Sam's pajamas was like nothing, a barely-decent cotton. Dean could feel it all.

"Dude," he said, because, you know, far be it from him to keep things from his brother. "Someone's got a _massive_ bo—"

Sam tongued his neck and Dean had to pause and moan for a second, put both hands down heavily to frame Sam against the desk. He ground in and up, his own dick aching in his jeans, denim dragging against Sam through his pants. Sam breathed hotly against his ear, pulling Dean suddenly, deliberately against him with hands spread on his ass.

"You want this or what?"

"Hey," Dean gasped, instead of _yes_. "Just because I watch porn, doesn't mean I want my little brother quoting lines." The air was breathless between them, their noses touching, but there was something lurching a little in Dean's chest, something that made him think—

Sam was halfway through pulling his shirt off, and Dean knew that if they didn't stop now—

The shirt had just cleared his head, and all the air was going from Dean's lungs. Dean grabbed around at it, twisted the fabric hard to catch Sam's hands together. "Hey. Easy, tiger."

He couldn't help himself; before he backed off, he pressed one hand hard from the drawstring of Sam's pants all the way up the plane of his chest, bumping knuckles along Sam's collarbone when he dipped in to coerce Dean into another open-mouthed kiss. Dean licked at the roof of his mouth, causing Sam to jerk back for a second, hands secured loosely behind his back. Kid was ticklish everywhere, Dean knew all his weak spots.

Then he took a careful step away. Frankly, he wasn't surprised at how hard it was to stop spreading his hands all over Sam, he always had had a strange fascination with touching his brother. Backing away, he tried not to even look at all that skin, the devil's trap they had both gotten one April. Tried not to think how the tattoo artist had just shaken his head with a small smirk and said, "as long as you're not drunk."

Dean met Sam's gaze steadily.

Sam, for his part, was breathing hard and looking at Dean like he'd actually gone insane this time.

"You've got to be shitting me," he said.

Dean sucked at his lip, covered in Sam spit, memorizing the taste. "I shit you not."

Sam got his hands free. He tossed the shirt to one side and tugged Dean to him by the belt loops. Dean knocked him off, stared him down in the dusky light.

Sam looked completely wrecked and infinitely desirable bracing himself against the desk, chest heaving. Dean wanted to go down on his knees right there, to smooth hands up Sam's thighs and feel the bunch of fabric under his fingers, his face. He wanted to give Sam everything he could, always had, but if there was even a doubt, right? If there was even a doubt, Dean shouldn't...he couldn't even put words to it.

So instead he just held Sam's gaze, every lengthening moment dividing them till Sam's breathing evened out and outrage, or something else, was visible. Even if Dean couldn't say anything, muddled, breathing hard himself, even if he couldn't make an argument against it, time would do it for them.

Sam finally looked away. He pushed past Dean, muttering, "whatever man." leaving a mess of crumpled newspaper clippings behind him on the desk and a knocked-over lamp that would probably burn everything, just one more house fire.

He sulked out of the room, and Dean just stood there.

  


  
When he woke the next morning, Dean was drooling and uncomfortable. He lay on the hard cushions, sun glaring through the drapes and birds louder than they had any right to be in suburbia. What day was it? He fumbled around for his phone.

Today was Sunday. What did that mean? He remembered blearily that Sam had said something about Monday. Trash. Tomorrow was trash day.

Dean rolled the recycling bin down to the curb, which used to be his job when he'd been living with Lisa. One time he'd flipped Ben into the trashcan—pretended to. Ben had screamed and laughed, clawing at Dean's arms and almost kicking him in the face, actually putting up a pretty good fight.

"Trashcans are as tall as eleven-year-olds," he'd reminded Ben after that at many breakfasts, and Ben had always promised to do his homework, rolling his eyes when Lisa wasn't watching.

Taylor was outside today, too, going through the mail.

Dean gave him a short wave. "You seen Sam?"

Taylor frowned at the letters, and then gave Dean a distracted smile. "He didn't tell you? He and Leila are meeting up down the block to have some talk about books."

"You don't say." Dean thought of Sam discussing the diction and syntax of chick lit with a bunch of other stay-at-home female types. It was horrifyingly easy to imagine.

"You got a thing against book clubs?"

"Of course not." Dean held up a staying hand. "I am, if anything, entirely supportive of women's social groups."

"Yeah? I just nod when Leila talks about that stuff. She got all mad at me when she saw I'd been using _Ulysses_ as a coaster." He threw the entire contents of his mailbox into the trash can.

"Junk mail?"

"Not really," Taylor said. "It's all just addressed to someone else. Haven't changed our address yet."

"Aren't you supposed to forward that?"

"I couldn't care less, gotta be honest," Taylor said. "Probably should, but there're more important things, right?"

"True," Dean said, but thought of how all their mail had been forwarded when they were kids. It was how Sam had gotten his college acceptance letters, which Dean had grudgingly stuffed into the pillowcase where dad wouldn't accidentally find them.

"Anyway," Taylor said. "Wanna come in for a beer? The game's on in—"

"Twenty minutes," Dean said. Hell yes he was _on_ it. "But, you know, I think I might just head in, get some work done."

"Oh, you got hired for a job?"

"Ah, nah, by work I mean," he floundered. "Housework."

"Housework," Taylor repeated. Yeah it sounded kind of lame, but if there was one thing Dean had learned in this line of work, it was to stand by your story, so by God Dean wouldn't budge an inch. No shame.

"Yeah, you know," Dean said. "Sam's really fucking messy and he always kind of throws things around when he gets home: shoes, food, pants. So...."

"Right, right," Taylor said. "Well, you get to it, then."

"Yeah. Got some dusting to do," Dean continued as they both started walking back towards their respective doors. "Under the...the stove, I guess. Along the baseboard and shit."

Taylor was at the front door, thoroughly done with the conversation; a man after Dean's heart.

"Yeah, well," he said. "You go tell those dust bunnies who's boss."

"I'll tell 'em you said 'hi'."

Just before he closed the door, Taylor called out after him. "Oh, and Dean?"

"Yes, Taylor."

"If Sam's as much like Leila as you say, I wouldn't forget to put out the trashcan."

Dean looked to him, then to the lone recycling bin at the curb. "Oh, yeah, thanks. But you know, we really only had empty beer bottles in the house. We don't do much cooking, so—"

"Right, right, of course," Taylor said. "A little jealous here, but you know."

"You're invited next time, man." He slapped the door frame heartily as he walked into the house in a jaunty fashion, and his hand stung for about five minutes afterward.

He closed the door behind him, and looked around the living room, considering whether he actually should clean up. In motel rooms, they always kept their stuff in their bags. But here, with so much space, they were reveling in being able to spread out, to trash the place like they were living in apartments again, with dad on the road for three weeks and pizza delivery every day.

Dean tossed a pillow back onto the couch. Yeah, cleaning up might make Sam happy, but Dean had spent the night on said couch and wasn't feeling too generous.

Instead, he spent the next ten minutes stacking the remaining beer cans into a pyramid, trying not to think about Sam spread out on any of the multitude of surfaces in the house. Not on the counters, not on the coffee table, hell, not _next_ to the coffee table on the short rug, kneeling—

Afterward, he went to the kitchen and opened a few cans to make some brunch. Pouring shit into a pan, he suddenly remembered the way Sam had grabbed him last night, how Sam'd looked pissed off that Dean was being difficult. It had made Dean's stomach knot up, because it meant that a month had gone by since Death had had his hands all over Sam, and now, finally, Sam wasn't pulling the post-wall repentant routine every damn second.

Dean stirred with a fork and chopped hot dogs into one inch pieces and added those as a sort of garnish.

Five minutes later, with the pot on the stove and beer cans in prime formation, he opened the laptop and clicked the internet window. Sam's e-mail was up on screen.

He wasn't going to look. It wasn't like Sam had anything to hide from him, not anymore, but he had explained to Dean how personal e-mail was the most private space a person had left these days, so Dean would respect that. Yeah, he was just about to open a new browser window, except then his eyes caught on the top message, previously unread.

He clicked it. It read as follows:

>   
>  from: Castiel, Angel of the Lord  
>  to: Sam W.
> 
> Sam, where are you?
> 
> Respond immediately.  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

> I better call in. Hell of a story I won't be telling.  
> Henriksen, "Jus in Belo"  
> 

  


  
Cas meets Internet. Internet meets Cas. Teaching Cas to use a touch pad. Dean wondered how it had happened, who had done it. Whether Cas had stood behind someone at a coffee shop to "observe," whether that someone had asked him politely to leave.

How had he and Sam not introduced the internet to him before? They'd taught him how to use a phone. Showing him how to navigate a computer would have been even more amusing. He experienced a faint twinge of regret, the kind that he allowed himself to feel for the little stuff. All the rest, well...none of that could be touched, it would be like pulling the pin out that held up the dam.

Shock past, he clicked to reply, judging that, in this specific situation, being to-the-point was probably best for all parties.

>   
> from: Sam W.  
> to: Castiel, Angel of the Lord
> 
> Hey, Cas. Since when do you have an e-mail address?  
> 

He sent the e-mail and then continued staring at the screen. When he realized he was waiting, he pushed away to go upstairs, get the guns in order in case tonight was the big one, and they actually found anything.

He organized the ammo they kept in the medicine cabinet. He showered, and after that he cleaned all the equipment of encrusted salt and grease, only to resalt and grease it anew. Guns were very phallic.

He made his way downstairs when he heard the door swing open, smoothing the banister as he went, because, well, they had a banister, and he could freaking stroke it if he wanted.

Sam was just opening his laptop. He tapped a few keys. Dean watched him from the doorway. Waited for it, waited for it, then:

"Cas can _e-mail_ now‽"

"Yeah," Dean jumped in immediately. "It's like ET learning how to ride a bike."

"Except angels are much more verbose and are just generally more badass overall, but yeah, just like that."

"Yeah, imagine Cas on a bicycle," Dean said. He stepped in to read over Sam's shoulder.

>   
> from: Castiel, Angel of the Lord  
> to: Sam W.
> 
> Dean, is that you? Where are you?

"Huh."

He pressed in so he could type.

>   
> from: Sam W.  
> to: Castiel, Angel of the Lord
> 
> How did you know it was me?

They waited for about thirty seconds in silence, before Sam opened a new window and Dean drew back, hot all over where they'd been touching, thinking about pressing Sam down with his weight. He wondered if Sam wanted to go at it right there at the kitchen table.

"Want some food?" Dean asked instead.

"Hell yes," Sam muttered, opening yet one more webpage that could mean the difference between undisturbed citizens and failure, a spirit lain to rest or a few hundred haunted houses.

Dean went to reheat the pot on the stove, flicking on the burner and stirring the congealed mass with a wooden spoon he'd left on the counter. He had forgotten the food after reading the first e-mail, but really, anything could survive a few hours out. It was always at least edible.

He opened the fridge while he waited. They hadn't gone shopping again, and Sam had polished off all of the vegetables and all the fruit, save for—Dean grabbed himself a piece of apple crumble, closed the fridge door, and shoveled the entire, squared slice into his mouth in about six seconds flat, three bites, one after another, the speed not detracting from the flavor one bit.

It was like an explosion of apple that pervaded all that he was. His heart was semi-permeable, its thick skin only allowed for the greatest of things, one of them being this baked wonder. The apples were sliced thin-to-none, with only the barest sprinkle of granulated sugar mixed in to taste, the bulk of the sweetness condensed instead in the hard and breaking top crust. It swam in a leeched broth of apple juice.

Dean sucked off the fork, the sweetness on metal just as integral to the overall experience as the rest. He left the tines pressing into his bottom lip like a reminder.

God _damn_.

If Sam had been in the same room, seated on the opposite motel bed or across from him at the diner like he usually was, he would have probably made some comment. And if he didn't say anything, the silent look of disdain would have served the same purpose. Here, though, Dean was blissfully alone in his devouring of the most sweet of tangy desserts, crumbly goodness all up in there. No one was in attendance to pass judgment, no one had even seen it happen. He was so free he almost didn't know what to do with it.

He barely skimmed the surface of the next thought, skirted the edges and got himself a beer while he did. He reflected that inhabiting this house felt the tiniest bit like his life post-Hell, right there at the beginning, maybe the first year out, how suddenly he was free of all ties that bound him but that that very freedom felt treacherous.

Like that time right after he'd begun hunting alone when he'd gotten a flat tire at the edge of a yellow field that curved into the horizon, under a blue that stretched so wide and pale it was like this grand skyscape of loneliness. He had sat on the hood of the Impala with one foot on the ground and sweat trickling slowly down the collar of his shirt, waiting for any car to pass by while the dried wheat waved in the wind, cool as you please.

No, not thinking about it at all. He wondered if Sam felt the same as all that in some fundamental way, that vague panic present at the edges and glowing soft through the cracks, drywall withstanding.

Speaking of, maybe Sam wanted some crumble, too.

He headed back to the room, making it at an amble, but relief weighed down in the palm of his hand where he held the tin.

As soon as he was in range, he shoved a forkful of apple and crust in Sam's face. Sam rolled his eyes but dutifully opened his mouth, knowing that it would end up all over if he didn't. Smart kid.

"Don't pretend you don't want it," he said, and shoved it in, hovering until he got some response.

"'S good, okay?" Sam said around the mouthful, his eyes still glued to the screen, not even flicking once in Dean's direction. It had possibly all been in his head, the way Sam had, overeager, so sincerely, tried to clamber into Dean's lap last night, maybe the setup for some domestic sort of hell. "And before you start eating that right in my ear, know that I could already hear you all the way from over here."

That was more like it.

"Don't deny me—"

"—your pie. Yeah, whatever. It's just gross, Dean. Learn how to chew with your mouth shut."

"Old dogs, Sam," Dean said with some modicum of satisfaction and strode back to the kitchen to dish out some friggen Spaghetti O's.

  


  
When he returned with bowls, Sam was smiling at another e-mail.

"This should not be as funny as it is," he said. "Take a look at this."

>   
> from: Castiel, Angel of the Lord  
> to: Sam W.  
> re: How did you know it was me?
> 
> Being more goal-oriented, Sam would have instantly addressed my question, while the email I received did not do this. You, Dean, who have proven yourself time and again more interested in the nuances of interpersonal relations and the emotional reasoning behind actions, which I believe springs from a desire to know that we are "on the level" with one another, rather than meet objectives, asked about me personally.
> 
> It is for this charitable and touching consideration, this innate Goodness, that you and I share a profound Bond, while Sam feels less endeared to me. Not only did he drink demon blood against the will of Heaven when I expressly asked him not to, but he continues to disregard my request that he modulate his voice to benefit my hearing, as my vessel's ears receive his voice as grating.
> 
> Conversely, it is Sam who I emailed, both because he is the one who has an email account and because he is more time-conscious and responsible on the whole. Also, Sam has spent a reasonable amount of time in prayer, while you, Dean, have spent a few hours in total, with most of it demanding things of me in particular. I therefore determined that Sam's having placed himself at the Mercy of the Lord and His Plan, and Sam's having spent many years meeting deadlines at school and university, would make him more likely to respond in a timely fashion, that my rather terse email would incite some sort of expediency on his part in answering.
> 
> Unfortunately, that has not occurred, and I have wasted an additional twenty minutes typing out this response. I do not understand why the key is called "shift." Victor Henriksen has shown me how to hold it down with one hand while I, beleaguered, search out the correct key for capitalization. He despaired of his Mission rather quickly past this point, and is, in fact, gone now. I am using my left and right index fingers but these observations are unimportant at this time.
> 
> If this is Dean reading the message, find Sam.
> 
> If Sam is now in attendance, proceed. If not, return to the previous line.
> 
> Sam, respond immediately: where are you?

  
"Seriously?" Dean said. "Henriksen? That dude's been dead for a couple a years at least."

Sam shrugged. "Stranger things have happened, I guess."

Dean shouldered him aside, leaned right over him so his armpit was in Sam's face, and typed out, "We. Are. At. The. Corner. of. Bay st. and. Yarrow. Blue. Ash. Cin. Ci. Nat. Ee."

"Wait," Sam said. Dean's finger hovered, ready to send the e-mail.

"No reason we shouldn't tell him where we are, is there?" But Sam was right, he just hadn't considered it.

"E-mail's rather unsecure, isn't it?" Sam said. "I mean, I want to tell him where we are, I do, and that message sounds like him, but shouldn't we make sure first?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Okay. Ask him something only he would know about us," Sam said. "Like—" he cast around for something visibly, gaze landing on Dean's mouth.

"Like," Dean said. He leaned into Sam again. It may have been hopeful on his part, stuttering like a skip of heartbeat, but he could have sworn Sam leaned right back against him. He typed out, "First...."

>   
> from: Sam W.  
> to: Castiel, Angel of the Lord
> 
> First, tell us what you did the last time we saw you?

  
As they stared at the screen, waiting for another unread mail to pop up, Dean stood stock still, conscious of the warmth running like a delineation of where he ended and Sam began. Sam hummed in his throat and turned his face to bite at the underside of Dean's arm.

"Sam—"

An e-mail blipped, and Dean clicked it, undone.

>   
> from: Castiel, Angel of the Lord  
> to: Sam W.
> 
> Ah, I see you are together now. Sam has urged you to check my identity, but you probably wrote the question, seeing as it is, once again, an inquiry that ends with a personal tribute of sorts.
> 
> In answer: The last time we spent together, you spoke with the Alpha vamp. I destroyed a warehouse of demons and vampires and other creatures on Sam's request, just after destroying Crowley. The answer I assume you are looking for, however, is that just before I did this, I told you I'd rather be on Earth, with you, than waging a war against my family. This remains true.

"Yeah, it's him."

Dean typed out the address, smooshing Sam in a way that should have made him huff in annoyance, but Sam just went with it. He touched Dean at the back of the knee and flat-palmed his hand around and up the inner seam of Dean's jeans while Dean breathed a shallow breath and pressed 'send' and tried not to fidget.

"Are we going to talk about this?" Sam was looking at him with characteristic determination.

Stupid question. They always did, but also, they always didn't.

"Nothing we haven't done before," Dean said. He didn't move, though. Not away from that hand. "Kids, you know. I used to give you a kiss every once and a while. It was pretty normal stuff."

"I was nine, Dean, usually after being sliced by some monster's claws, and it was a kiss on the forehead. This time, though, I really, really liked it. Comforting is not the same thing. And it's not like the thought hasn't crossed my mind before, I mean, let's be ho—"

"Sam, just leave it."

"No, Dean."

"You just grew up unsocialized," he rationalized for the both of them, one last ditch attempt. "It's no wonder you liked it."

Sam wasn't listening. He was probably blocking out half of what Dean claimed out loud because the hitch in his voice spoke for him, that and the way he stood there instead of backing away while Sam felt up his inner thigh like a slow portent.

Dean looked down at him, eyelids lowered, breathing out of his nose because that's what you did when you panicked. So maybe it worked backwards, anti-panic techniques to inspire the sort of panic that should be tearing through his gut instead of this thrumming anticipation.

Just then, the air was shoved aside to make room for Castiel's entrance. Dean felt it physically, as he always did, a stirring of the room, a banking of tension, the onset of some relief. He stepped away from Sam.

"I've been searching for you," Cas told them without preamble. "You don't have your cell phones turned on."

"Well hello to you, too."

"Why didn't you ask Bobby where we were?" Sam asked.

"Bobby is also unaccounted for."

Dean took a step forward. "What? Bobby's gone missing?"

"I didn't say missing," Cas said, giving him a quelling look. "Just unaccounted for."

"Oh, right," Sam said. "He and Rufus are in Oklahoma."

"In any case," Cas told them. "That is not of relevance. As I've told you, there is a war raging. It's not going well for us, upstairs. Many of my brothers and sisters have perished. In the search for Purgatory—" He broke off. "Is this home warded?"

"Home," Dean scoffed, while Sam said, "Yeah, Cas, it's warded."

"Good. No one must know of this plan. Before we continue, however, might I inquire as to why you two are posing as a suburban couple?"

"Community rules," Dean said. "Also, we've never explicitly said it to anyone, just on the forms. People assume what they will, who are we to correct them? Sam and I, we'll just carry on, and if anyone else wants to apply labels, that's up to them. Live and let live, is what I've always said—"

"Yeah, that rationale is getting kind of old," Sam interrupted. Then, to Cas: "There's a spirit haunting the neighborhoods here. It's somewhere in this housing community, but not specific to any one location because the remains were scattered. The easiest way to gain access to the gated community over a period of time was to live here, scope it all out and find any possible remains."

"Also, Sam here's just got his soul back," Dean added. "We thought we'd lie low for a while. No false moves."

"This is probably wise," Cas looked at Sam, square in the chest. "How are you feeling, Sam?"

"I feel pretty Goddamn tired of people talking about my soul, no offense meant of course."

Cas inclined his head. "Of course."

"Both of you keep telling me to stop thinking about it. I don't see how bringing it up constantly constitutes letting it be."

"Whaddaya say we just change the subject," Dean said. "Cas, stop staring at Sam's chest like you want to probe him again. Sam, chill out. Stop thinking about it and think about something you really like. Think about ponies."

"I fail to understand how ponies—"

"Never mind," Dean said. Cas continued to look confused with an almost Sam-like expression on his face, squinting at Dean as if that would help him read the meaning in the air. "Tell us what you need, Cas. Like I said, we're here for you."

"I alone hold the keys to Heaven's weapons," Cas said. "And I alone am aware of the search for Purgatory. I may have discovered a clue, but it has taken me until very recently to see it."

"And that has to do with us somehow, I'm guessing."

"The instance of lost souls that you have come across, and, yes, you and Sam."

"What are you saying, Cas?" Sam said. "You're saying you know where Purgatory is?"

"I have a dark suspicion."

They waited for further clarification, but none came.

"You don't say," Dean prompted.

Cas stared at them both, a serious look.

"I will keep you apprised," he said, and disappeared.

  


  
The first real attack happened that night. There was some commotion outside. Dean looked out the window, feeling like a peeping tom, and saw the couple from across the street running down the sidewalk. He yelled for Sam, grabbing a gun from the empty bookshelf. They took off at a sprint down the road.

A bunch of people were already inside when they got to the house on the corner.

A woman was crying at the steps, being comforted by neighbors. Sam crouched down, putting a hand on her arm. "What happened?"

"My husband," she said. "I think he's gone crazy."

"Why's that?"

"Says a—" She put a hand to her mouth to cover a sob.

"It's all right, Mrs. Briggs."

"He says a ghost attacked him, pushed him down the stairs! A ghost!"

"Where's your husband now?" asked Dean.

She motioned to the back of the house. Dean gave Sam a look and then carried on to the kitchen, where Mr. Briggs was pressing an ice pack to his arm.

Dean shook a woman's hand, remembering her from the block party. "Hello, Mrs. Pewitt."

"It's happened again," she said, looking hysterical around the eyes. "I'd started to think I was imagining things, but I guess I wasn't. I'm thinking about taking an extended vacation."

She left, and Dean turned to the older man. They shook hands, and Dean said, "Mr. Briggs, I'm your neighbor from down the street. We met a few weeks back. Dean Wesson."

Mr. Briggs sat heavily in a kitchen chair. "I remember you, boy. You're married to the tall fella who fixed the flag on our mailbox."

"Civil unioned," Dean felt compelled to correct him. "Not actually recognized in this state, though. But yeah, that's me. Us, I mean. Anyway, I wanted to make sure you were all right. I heard about your spill."

"Nearly broke my wrist," the man said. "At this age, just about any fall will do you in. I'm always careful."

"I'm sorry to hear about your accident. Your wife says you noticed something strange?"

He grimaced. "If you call getting pushed over by a ghost 'noticing,' then yes. It was a middle-aged man in a lab coat. I thought he was someone who'd broken in, but when I tried to speak with him, he shoved me. I can't decide whether falling down the stairs is more embarrassing with or without being shoved by a ghost."

"Mr. Briggs," Dean said. "I can't help but notice you're taking this in stride."

He leveled Dean with a stern look over the rim of his glasses. "Take a seat, young man. My mother used to tell me a thing or two about ghosts. I never believed a word of it, but I think it's high time we accepted the facts and learned how to handle them."

Dean said, "Well, sir, I—"

"First thing to know about ghosts, she always told me, is they're afraid of cinnamon. I know it sounds crazy, but better safe than sorry."

"You don't say?" Dean said weakly.

He sat down for the long talk.

By the time Dean had suffered through the preliminary warnings about ghosts and how to handle them, twenty minutes had passed and he was kind of pissed that Sam hadn't come to his rescue or something.

He went out into the living room and saw that the neighbors had turned the house into a regular get-together. One thing that could be said for suburban life, these guys always jumped at the opportunity to throw a party. Mr. Winston had whipped up a fruit salad that they were all eating in china bowls, and Mrs. Aguilar had broken out the white wine.

There was no sign of Sam, so Dean went upstairs to where he was probably checking out the scene.

Sure enough, he heard Sam's voice, and Leila's too. He wasn't surprised, woman was nosy. Dean must have read secrecy in the cadence of Sam's voice, though, because he automatically slowed to a stop before entering the room down the hall.

He stood just around the corner, in time to hear Sam say, “—that was the first guy I dated. Kind of egocentric, really attractive but in a nihilistic way, the exact opposite of Dean, really. I think I was just trying to forget him, I missed him so much."

Dean held his breath, one hand pressed against the wall.

“That obviously didn't pan out," Leila said.

“No, I haven't talked to him in years. And I was with this other guy a good six months, stuck somewhere in the middle of college. We even lived together for a while."

What the hell? Dean tried to believe that this was all fabricated. Obviously it had to be. Leila seemed pretty fixated on relationships, Sam probably felt cornered.

But he knew Sam's voice better than he knew himself, and it didn't sound like Sam was lying. If anything, his voice had sounded truth-softened and self-deprecating, like it was a memory he'd never been able to share.

“But I was still all mopey." Sam's voice was low and cool with remembering. "God, I carried this picture of Dean and me everywhere, until I lost my wallet. Cared more about that picture than my driver's license, because the license I could at least get back."

“Romantic," Leila said.

“Kind of creepy, really." He laughed, this nostalgic sound that tugged at Dean's gut. "You don't even know the half of it. It just felt weird to start over with those other guys, to try to build up the sort of trust that Dean and I had always worn like a second skin. Thinking about it now, it seems pathetic."

“We're all pretty pathetic, in retrospect," Leila said.

“Yeah. Well, it's stupid, not even worth thinking about."

“Gotta talk to someone, right?"

Dean swayed where he stood, but he got a move on when he heard Sam say, “bathroom." They ran into each other and Sam froze long enough for Dean to confirm it all.

He smiled all fake as Leila followed Sam out. "Nice to see you here."

"I heard people on the street, so I wanted to make sure everything was all right." She nodded to the hallway where Sam'd disappeared. “And get some gossip while I was at it."

“Anything good?" Dean had this sick feeling in his stomach. He wanted to leave right then, but couldn't make himself go through the motions.

“Passable," she said. “Never met anyone so sincere. It's kind of jarring, to be honest."

Dean snorted, feeling uncharitable.

  


  
"Looks like we're not dealing with a death echo," Sam said, once they'd left the house. "We're dealing with one pissed off spirit."

"Or spirits," Dean said. "This one was a dude. And there was that article that documented a few other sightings whose descriptions don't match, either. Sam, over thirty people burned alive that day. I'm betting we're dealing with a horde of angry spirits."

Sam nodded slowly. "And maybe they haven't been able to go corporeal because their remains are scattered, parts of them burned completely."

"So they're only haunting at half-capacity."

Now, they finally had something to go on, and it felt good to bust out the lingo, remember why they were here. A few weeks of the settled life seemed to be doing Sam good, but Dean's reflexes were getting rusty. Talking about the case, it felt like nothing had changed. You know, except the inappropriate touching and what Dean had overheard in the hallway.

"Well now we know one thing," Sam said. "We've got to find a way to get rid of them all. I'm thinking a spell. Maybe an incantation."

"We've never come across a spell that could gather and then waste an army of spirits."

"Time to do more reading," Sam sighed. "There goes tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh goody."

Later, when they got home and headed to bed, Sam unknotted his tie and dallied at his jeans while Dean pulled on a t-shirt and boxers and slipped under the covers without a word.

Awkward. Dean was lying there later in the blue darkness, Sam next to him, warm and asleep six inches away on his front with an arm under his pillow, breathing soft while Dean tried not to bolt. Either that or reach out a hand and just touch him in the dark.

In other situations, when it was just them on the road, driving through the black night, not looking at one another as they had their heart-to-hearts...well then, at least, Dean was doing something. He'd have his hands to the wheel and Sam could look out the window. He wouldn't have to be so conscious of the minutia, every sleeping shift of Sam next to him, wondering if it was obvious how he held his breath sometimes to stop himself. Because, driving, he could blame it on the car, the rumble of the engine, the wind. He freaking loved that car.

Lying here in the stillness, though, only the dull attempts from the streetlight cut through. He felt that dangerous impulse that often came to him. Face pressed into the pillow, edging away from the dip in the mattress, Dean had this fairytale feeling that nothing he did then would count, that all moves he made would be unseen, unfelt, left to the space between four AM and dawn, when things became real again. He could smooth a hand across Sam's back like he used to a long time ago now, and curl up around him to fall asleep instead of lying here, rigid and trying not to make a sound.

After visiting the Briggs', they'd tramped around in the backyards of twenty more homes that night. They'd brushed their teeth separately and then climbed into bed without speaking. Dean didn't know if he could do this any more.

  


  
He started sleeping on the couch. The case was for shit, after all, with apparently dangerous spirits appearing at random, impossible to exorcise, and a man needed his beauty rest. And Sam knew that Dean had heard what he'd said to Leila. Acknowledgment of it, regardless of whether it was true, would change everything. It was something they didn't talk about.

In the daytime, though, Dean started using every excuse to take advantage of their giant bed upstairs. So long as Sam wasn't lying in it, it was his again. He missed it. The comforter was downy and the mattress was just firm enough. It didn't feel like a hundred faceless wanderers had slept in it, like a motel bed, it felt just broken in and only reminded him of Sam.

Right then he was lying on his side, propping himself up on an elbow and watching while Sam leaned into the relatively hopeless mess of the closet, commentary coming out muffled.

"We have consistent and free access to a washer for the first time in a decade, that's all I'm saying."

"Hey, speak for yourself," Dean said. "I had a washer just last year and I still didn't do laundry."

"That's because you had someone to do it for you," Sam said, but without much accusation. He picked up a wadded t-shirt and gave it a tentative sniff, allowing Dean a chance to continue that line of conversation if he wanted.

He still hadn't told Sam much about his year with Lisa and Ben. He had glossed over it, said it hadn't worked out, and however curious Sam was, he had just let it be. Theirs was a transitory life, it was understood. All other details were just flowers and glass scattered by the wayside.

Sam nudged at the pile of shirts and boxers with his foot. "All I'm saying is, this? This is gross. _We're_ gross, Dean."

"Time to face the facts, Sammy."

"Should have put our clothes in at Bobby's," Sam muttered. "Maybe we can just incinerate them?"

"You always say that. And why now? There isn't even any blood."

Sam didn't answer. His gaze caught on Dean's duffel bag half shoved under the bed.

"Good luck with that." Dean rolled back into the pillows.

Sam grabbed the bag and looked in it, suspicious, and Dean closed his eyes. He sank back into the quilt and listened to the silent house, letting himself relax to the slow motor sounds of the single car cruising out on the street and to Sam pushing around in the bag like he'd find anything relatively unworn. Dean knew for a fact that he'd stuck a pair of socks in there that he'd gotten muddy and wet a few weeks ago. He'd just left them in there to fester, and here Sam was, reaching around with not nearly enough trepidation. Dean snickered to himself.

Sam went hesitant at the sound. "What?"

"Just you wait."

Sam poked around a bit more, tentatively. "Ew."

He had cause to tense up shortly after, though, when Sam said, "Aha!" and Dean remembered suddenly that he'd been hiding something, something inconsequential but which was a reminder nonetheless.

He opened his eyes and saw that, sure enough, Sam was unfolding a discolored t-shirt for inspection. He sat up, throwing a leg off the bed with the vague intent of grabbing the shirt out of Sam's hands without somehow drawing attention to the fact that he was doing so, but then Sam started smelling it less than carefully, more relieved.

"Oh, thank God," he said, shaking it out in front of him. "Clean."

He pulled off his current shirt. Dean watched the fabric slide from Sam's shoulders, didn't want to go put his mouth there. He was completely and utterly unmoved by the tight perfection of Sam's lower abs, the way his jeans were low-slung, drawing Dean's eyes down to the hint of what he had seen a thousand times but wanted more of. And then Sam was tugging the clean t-shirt on over his head, yanking at the bottom to judge the fit, and Dean looked away. The sleeves of the thing stretched obscenely over Sam's arms.

"A little small," Dean started, weak in the chest with want.

"Mine now," Sam told him.

"It's all bleached," Dean said. "Too 70s. Take it off."

"Hm, yeah it is," Sam said. "With a weird dark spot on the chest. I really don't see how that matters."

That decided, he gave Dean a pointed look and then looked at the laundry.

"Fine," Dean said.

He got to his feet before he could think about it, and helped Sam take the piles downstairs. He felt weird all over, watching Sam's back muscles as he bent to grab the clothes which were, yes, disgusting, worse than usual because they'd moved in here temporarily and it wasn't like a motel room where the smell of blood and lighter fluid got real apparent, real fast. Here they had closets and drawers to hide their dirty laundry and forget about it.

A case in New Mexico had nearly ended Dean, was the story of the shirt. It was three years ago and he'd passed out in the desert, just lying there for four or five hours until Sam found him.

Dean was in need of water. His face was burnt for two weeks after the fact, his lips cracked, and he'd been wearing the shirt so now it was sun-oranged all over. Everywhere, except for the smudge smack dab in the middle of the chest where Sam's amulet had glinted in the noonday heat.

Dean wanted to pull the shirt off of Sam and tuck it away forever. He wanted to take Sam back upstairs and help him undress, to ball up what he was wearing and throw it into the corner of the room. Then he'd roll Sam into the soft of the mattress.

Sam had the lid of the laundry machine open and waiting. "Taylor said they'd be leaving in about twenty minutes from now, so we should get going. I mean, unless...." His voice went hesitant and liquid while Dean disentangled himself from his real-time fantasy. Sam was watching him and unreadable.

"Unless nothing," Dean said. He dropped the armload of boxers and socks into the machine and then poured in some detergent. He closed the lid and wet his lips, needing to say it. "Sam—"

Dean stopped. He reminded himself of the reasons he'd listed one sleepless night and every minute after, why he couldn't do this, why they couldn't go there.

Sam waited for him to continue, unmoving. He was all tanned arms and slim waist in Dean's soft, discolored shirt.

When Dean didn't continue, Sam ran a hand over his face, looking exhausted. "I swear to God, Dean. If you start something and don't follow through this time—"

"That's why I won't," Dean said. "Start something. I mean it, Sam. You don't know what you're asking for."

"All right," Sam said. "All right. Let's just...let's just go."

Dean had expected an argument, because that was how they talked things out, in raised voices and by getting up in each others' faces. Now, though, Sam just backed off, like all the fight had already gone out of him. Dean had squandered it, story closed, and now he was left with that nausea somewhere in his chest, that feeling which marked the growing disparity between action and desire.

He knew it was for the best, though. Dean wanted to do unspeakable things, but acting on them would probably fuck their lives to next Tuesday and he couldn't let that happen, not when he'd just got Sam patched up and out of Hell free, when things were tenuous. It was a small fucking price to pay, he told himself, not having Sam like that.

If Sam was letting it go, so could he. Hadn't worked before, but now it would.

"Just forget it, okay?" After all, Dean was nothing if not always right and fantastic at anything he put his mind to.

  


  


They'd only been at the bar and grill for an hour, and Sam had already had too much to drink; kid got real bratty when he was tipsy. He'd snapped at Dean three times, to the point where Leila had changed the subject and Taylor had finally dragged her off to get them a fourth round.

"Could you be a little more polite?" Dean said once they were alone. "I know you're pissed about earlier, and I'm not asking you to hold my hand, just stop being a total bitch for once. Just, I swear to God, Sammy."

"Yeah, I heard what you said earlier, loud and clear," Sam snapped. "So I'd appreciate it if you stopped feeling up your pool stick."

That was...unexpected, to say the least. Dean made sure Sam knew this, by raising his eyebrows at him and informing him he was crazy. "I'm not feeling up my pool stick. Is that what's got your man-thong in a twist?"

"Gross, Dean."

"Look who's talking." Dean downed the rest of his beer and put the empty pint glass solidly on a table. "I'm just trying to play a nice, clean game of pool, spread the neighborly good will, and you're accusing me of weird shit. News flash: not everything is sexual."

Sam looked kind of morose when he said, "It is with you, okay."

And here Dean's brain kind of stuttered to a halt. He was stuck on the remark, specifically how Sam said it like he was so used to the idea he could throw it out there like it was nothing, like it was a fact of their lives long-since accepted to the point where he'd become embittered.

Oblivious, Sam kept on. "Stop looking at me like that. This is not all in my head, okay?" he said while Dean was imagining what he'd look like bent over the pool table. And man, Dean's mind was _ready_ with that image, how what they'd do would seriously fuck up their game, but how he'd press against Sam from behind anyhow like there was no one watching, Sam trying to find purchase against the felt of the pool table with his fingers, stripes and solids scattering every which way.

"I'm sick of all the blame being put on me," Sam was saying, and Dean only knew he was talking because he was watching the ridiculous shape of Sam's mouth, imagining all sorts of things. "This is at least half your fault."

"Well it's half your fault, too," he said weakly. The response was rote, muscle memory he fell back on at desperate times like these. He had gone from kind of confused to braindead-hard in under a minute.

"So it's not a guilt thing?" Sam asked.

"What?"

"It's just, I figured that was part of it, why you don't want to do this. I'm trying to figure out what's up with you, man."

"What?" Dean said again, dumbly. He hadn't even been listening. Sam crossed his arms, annoyed, and then Leila and Taylor started making their way back from the bar with drinks. "Oh, thank God. Look, will you just act couply? Just try, okay?"

Sam rolled his eyes and looked away. He sulked by the wall like a child, and Dean rubbed orange chalk over the tip of his cue and pretended to consider the table.

"My turn?" Taylor asked.

"Yep. Sam wanted to cheat, but I stopped him." He gave Sam a winning smile.

He'd been going easy up until this point, deliberately scratching and drawing the game out, but he couldn't really manage the sort of slow, bantering conversation they'd been having, not with Sam looking at him like that, so Dean beat Taylor a minute later.

"Sam, you're up," Leila said.

Dean started racking the balls again. "Scared, Sammy?"

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry, babe. Not in public, I forgot."

Sam scowled while Dean batted his eyelashes in a blatantly sarcastic manner and put the triangle back on the wall, but he went a little red in the face so he couldn't have been all that angry. Dean made a conceding gesture with his hand and Sam came around to take the first shot.

He stood to one side, watching as Sam bent to take it, leaning a forearm on the table and lining up the cue with practiced intent. His face was shadowed, the light swinging slow above him, and when he sucked at his bottom lip in concentration, Dean caught himself unconsciously mirroring it. He stopped as soon as he noticed of course, but he was getting that feeling of anticipation somewhere in his gut like he always did when Sam was seriously trying to win. Made him all tingly.

At the surrounding tables, people were talking and there was the clattering madness of pool sticks and balls clacking off of one another, a buzz of constant conversation, but their table existed in a sort of suspended reality, a tension finally broken with a crack as Sam hit the white, sinking four balls in one go.

"Nice," Leila said.

"Yeah, he's something else." Dean watched as Sam surveyed the table for his next shot, not even glancing in Dean's direction.

As far as pool went, they weren't evenly matched. Dean had a few more years under his belt, from when he'd been hustling on weeknights around the country while Sam had been honing his skill in other areas: beer pong, Dean suspected, and intermural soccer. He and Sam had infiltrated a frat party once and Sam had fit right in. It had been eerie to watch.

And this game was so different from Sam playing cocky for older men in scuzzy bars. He wasn't overacting, hadn't shot with a flourish and then cussed when he'd missed on purpose. It was just him and Dean, and at the end of the night Dean wouldn't have to come pick a public fight and Sam wouldn't have to avoid being socked in the gut by an angry old-timer who was getting wise to the fact that at least one of them was a shark.

Instead, Sam would play cold for Dean, kind of pissed, like he needed to prove himself or knock Dean down a notch. It was all for Dean, either way, and they were going home together, no matter what.

Sam shot two more times, and got all but two stripes before he sunk the maroon seven. Dean was up, and oh, it was so on.

"Your ass is mine, bitch," he said, wincing almost immediately upon saying it. Sam just rolled his eyes, but Dean held his ground. "Oh you know what I mean. Your ass is _grass_."

"Just take your turn and miss already," Sam muttered, but he was smiling, maybe a little.

"Miss?" Dean got two in one, aimed again and jumped the white to sink the five ball in a corner pocket. "Want to place any bets to make this win a little sweeter for me?"

He sent an exaggerated wink towards Leila and Taylor who, turns out, weren't really paying attention in the riveted manner Dean had imagined. Not everyone's attention was constantly on Sam. It was a realization which always blew him away, but it was probably for the best; didn't do to have the neighbors onto the fact that they had pool gods in their midst.

The game lasted all of five minutes. Last shot and Sam wasn't pissed any more, just focused and considering whether to try for a three point ricochet just to avoid going for a middle pocket.

Dean came up behind him. "Need some help with that shot?"

Sam crouched down to table level, looking down the length of the thing.

"Are you really stooping that low?" he said. "Using distraction tactics to win this?"

"No," Dean said. "But I know your weaknesses and I know your tells. You always have trouble with the middle pocket and you're going for left handed which means you'll hit it too hard."

"Dean," Sam said. "Stop trying to give me advice."

He stood again and then bent to take the shot. He didn't jump when Dean came up behind him.

Dean touched his back in a light press of finger tips, then his hip, and Sam said, “Dean, I swear to God, you are the most annoying person I've ever met."

"I'm sorry about being an asshole," Dean said. He spread his hand over Sam's lower back, unsure of what he was doing. Playing a role, using the situation as an excuse to do something he'd never be allowed from now on. All he knew was he could feel the erratic beat of his own heartbeat in his palm.

"You're being an asshole right _now_ ," Sam told him, as Dean touched the back of Sam's arm.

"I'd aim the cue a bit more this way. You hit it where you're at and the top spin will knock it off course."

"Hypocrite," Sam said, but took the shot. The cue ball rolled slowly across the table to tap the eight. It rolled even slower to tip quietly into the middle pocket, clinking against the balls already there.

"Nice."

Sam turned and Dean just let his touch drag along Sam's abs through the shirt like it was a dare and he had that excuse.

"Dean," Sam said, something dark in his voice. "Stop looking at me like you won."

The dusk of the bar was a distant buzz around them. Leila and Taylor were talking by the table, not even looking, and Sam was angling towards him, soft and unexpected, Dean's hand on him still. He understood it without spoken explanation, Sam was about to do something, kiss him hard and it would all derail after that, the whole course of their lives. It seemed inevitable; Sam was going to do it and Dean was going to let it happen.

“A win is a win," Dean philosophized.

"Seriously," Sam said. "Fucking hypocrite, Dean. Do you even know what you're doing?"

Dean considered lying, but thought better of it. "No."

Sam didn't do anything Dean expected. Instead, he put his hands in his pockets and shook his head, which, in some way, was as much a concession as anything.

  


  
They ganked a sewer-bred swamp creature that weekend, just drove four hours to Columbus and did it messy all in one evening, back in time for breakfast the next day.

It was something of a record, and even though Sam was bleeding from a sizable gash on his shoulder, it wasn't serious. Dean reached around and grabbed a hand towel they'd stolen from their last motel and Sam caught it against his face.

“Keep the pressure on it," Dean said, even though Sam rolled his eyes and said, “Do you know how _many_ times this has happened?" The annoyance was a good sign.

They pulled into the driveway, world just pinking at its skyline, the streets silent except for the 80s grunge metal cassette playing on low volume along with the quiet push of the heater. Sam said, "I still can't believe we have a garage door opener."

"I still can't believe we have a garage." Dean followed him into the house and up to their bathroom where Sam was pulling out the first aid kit from the top drawer. Dean shoved him on the good shoulder and said, "Down, just—wait here."

He went to the steps to grab the bottle of whiskey where he'd left it.

Sam was unbuttoning his shirt stiffly under the 40 watt, environmentally-friendly bulbs. Dean waited until he'd gotten down to his t-shirt before offering him the bottle.

"Sit back." He went to work, only stopping just before the stitches to shuck his jacket and hand it to Sam. "Bite down on this."

Sam rolled his eyes, but took it.

"Yeah, yeah, don't get in the way of the claws next time."

He pressed the needle to flesh. Sam hissed, grinding his teeth into the heavy cloth. Dean winced in sympathy, but kept stitching, a careful hand on Sam's shoulder, thumb pressing down the skin. Sam was gripping the edge of the porcelain sink, probably holding his breath.

"You'll be fine, man." Dean tied off the thread, cut it, and grabbed the antiseptic wipes. “Back to your usual housewifery in no time."

"I have no clue what you're talking about."

"The nice dinners? Book clubs?"

"Nice dinners? We keep ordering pizza and making Spaghetti Os."

"No, the pansy veggie chicken and agave-sweetened kale, which I've been preparing myself for by the way," he said. "To laugh at, obviously. All I'm saying, is I've seen your internet searches."

Sam stayed put as Dean worked, didn't even act embarrassed.

"I was finding that for Taylor," he told Dean, after a pause. “He wants to surprise Leila with dinner, but she always somehow finds out what he's doing online. You and her have a lot in common, apparently."

"Oh," Dean said. "I should probably stay out of your stuff, huh?"

"And also, book clubs are all about research, man. I've been asking the women about strange occurrences in the neighborhood. Not that I've found anything useful."

That...made sense. They let it drop.

Dean took a minute to rub a damp towel wherever there was blood: Sam's ear, all down his arm, the heel of his hand. He thought he could definitely live like this, like before, even though sometimes he imagined his heart was physically aching. That was normal, though, something you felt for people you'd fought so hard to hold on to.

Sam leaned his face against Dean's hip, taking a few deep breaths. Dean cut gauze and taped it over the wound.

Sam'd never been like this with anyone else, Dean was relatively sure. It hit him at the strangest times. Maybe back in college he'd curled up against people, probably Jess, but he'd never been so off-guard. Dean felt the knowledge like it was a vein of warmth that underlay everything, subcutaneous.

When he was finished, Sam seemed almost asleep against him, tired from bloodloss and staying up for most of two days.

Dean tossed the washcloth in the direction of the bathtub and put a tentative hand on the top of Sam's head. "I'm, uh."

Sam went completely still, like he was holding his breath, so Dean ran his fingers back through his hair. When Sam sighed into it, Dean did it again, carding his fingers through that ridiculous mane, scritching at the nape of his neck. He felt Sam groan against his hip and went shivery all over. He pushed the wrinkles out of Sam's forehead and then gently moved away.

“Right," he said. "Right, let's get you to bed. You're getting all delirious."

Sam stood, blinking slowly and prodding at the gauze.

"C'mon, don't touch it," Dean said, and pushed him into the bedroom.

He watched Sam pull the covers over himself, one handed, and then went downstairs to fix himself a drink and pass out on the couch.

  


  
Two men were seated at the far table. Johnny Cash was scratching on the radio and the bartender wiped down the sticky counter with a warm, damp rag.

It was only six PM, the time these two guys usually met up. The bartender glanced at them on occasion. They both looked sick today, more than usual. The alcoholic who never took off his coat was stubbly and had deep circles around his eyes like he was recovering from the bender of a lifetime. The other guy had this haunted look about him, like he might keel over right then and there. He'd never so much as looked up when the drinks were brought, like he wasn't aware of his surroundings.

Two crazies, for sure, but they tipped big.

The one with the look of a religious martyr removed something from his pocket and placed it on the table. A piece of wood.

The bartender shook his head and went to the back to grab some clean glasses before the night's rush. He missed how Henriksen disappeared like smog gas, a quiet flickering in and out of existence, and how Castiel, an air of relief about him, disappeared shortly thereafter.

  


  
Dean got back in the afternoon with a last load of car parts. All he had left to work on was replacing the wipers and changing the tires, and then he'd feel like he'd adequately given the car the attention it'd been needing for way too long now.

"Heya Taylor," he said when he walked in, not surprised any more to find someone else in his house. They'd salted the doors and windows, and put charcoal sigils under all the pictures that had come with the house, so things felt relatively safe.

"Sam's in the kitchen," Taylor told him.

"Thanks."

Dean went upstairs and changed into a different t-shirt. Embarrassingly, he was relieved Taylor was there sitting on the couch watching something low on TV, because he didn't necessarily want to be with alone with Sam right now.

That morning, he'd driven into the city and talked with some guys at the garage, standing around like someone who had no other place to be. It felt like he was avoiding something, something big that was gonna hit him sooner or later.

Afterward, he'd grabbed a beer at a divey sort of bar that had antlers on the wall and he'd played some pool with the bartender for an hour before he could admit to himself that he'd been avoiding driving back to Blue Ash.

Much as it pained him, he and Sam needed to talk. Problem was, every time he looked at Sam he didn't want to talk. He'd rather push past Sam's shirt to kiss his way up his spine, wanted to feel Sam's living skin hot under his hands any way he could. It was twisted and kind of depressing. It hit him in waves, and he couldn't switch it off in his brain, not really, even when he tried.

So, yeah. That was where he was at: morally reprehensible and turned on.

He went into their bathroom to wash his face, wondering if maybe it wasn't time to finish up this case so they could put this behind them, or at least pretend to.

They hadn't made much headway. He had no doubt that they were going to get the spirits in the end, of course—they always, _always_ did—but it was the legwork in the middle that was seemingly impossible. At least they had Cas working on it. Maybe. It was hard to tell what Cas had planned, so they would just have to trust that he would show up if they called.

He was moisturizing when he heard footsteps coming into the room, then a knock at the open door. He didn't seek out Sam in the reflection, finished rubbing everything in first with the tips of his fingers. When he finally focused on him, Sam was leaning against the door frame, watching.

Sam nodded to the bottle. "Middle of the day?"

"Skincare waits for no man." Dean wiped off his face with a towel which he tossed on the counter after. "How's the arm?"

"It's fine." Sam had his arms crossed across his chest, dressed in just a blue t-shirt and jeans. Dean cleared his throat.

"What are you guys doing downstairs?"

"Just watching some TV. I was bored, so I asked him to come hang out."

Dean'd run out of things to do in front of the mirror. He put his hands on the edge of the counter as the silence settled, watching Sam watch him.

When he shut his eyes for a second, it wasn't like he hadn't expected it, how Sam came to him instantly, pressing up from behind and running his hands down the length of Dean's arms to hold his hands where they were, gripping the counter for support. The fuzz of some sports channel drifting up the stairs was the only sound. Dean's breath went shallow, the claustrophobia of space lessened with Sam pressed around him like this, warm and hard, and it wasn't until Sam leaned to kiss his earlobe that Dean thought maybe they should put a damper on things.

"Get off me, man," he said. It came out relatively calm, a small miracle, said as if Sam couldn't see the way he was reacting in the mirror.

"What are we even doing?" Sam said into his ear, curling their fingers together on the counter top.

He could think of a million answers, but none that made any sort of sense. Instead, he asked what had been nagging at him. He wanted to pick a fight, maybe. "Someone else do this?"

Sam looked a question at him in the mirror.

“Some other guy," Dean clarified, leaning back into him demonstratively. "Did you do this with him?"

Sam released him, taking a quarter of a step back and smoothing down Dean's chest, abs, pressing his lips to Dean's shoulder. “What the fuck does it matter?"

Dean got this feeling of an impending headache, a dulled rage that made it hard to think.

From downstairs, there was a settling noise, like fabric falling in a heap, but in a holy sort of way. Then: "Hello."

"Hi," they heard Taylor answer.

Sam met his eyes in the mirror, conversation derailed. "Is that Cas?"

"Shit," Dean said.

When they got to the living room, Cas was standing by the coffee table, staring placidly at the wall while Taylor scrutinized him from his place on the couch. It was like they were having a showdown, a test of who could be silent the longest.

Cas inclined his head when they entered. "Dean, Sam."

"Cas, meet Taylor," Sam said. "Taylor, Cas."

"Our friend," Dean clarified, an aside. "Kind of that awkward, genius type."

Taylor stood for a handshake which Cas took rigid part in, moving in a second too late and staying a second too long.

"What are you doing here, Cas?" Sam asked, but then the doorbell rang. "That'd be dinner. Dean, you got any cash?"

"Yeah, yeah." He went and pulled the door open to a college-aged kid balancing a couple of boxes. "Hey."

"Good afternoon," the guy said, bored. "Two large pizzas. That'll be $25.50."

Dean pulled out his wallet. When he went to hand thirty to the guy, Dean noticed he was looking into the living room, just over Dean's shoulder. Dean turned his head to find Cas directly behind him, squinting.

"Are you...the Pizza Guy?"

The guy met Cas' steady gaze. "Yes."

"I see." Cas' voice felt like sex rolled over gravel, it stretched the air with electricity. Dean shifted.

"Believe me," he told the guy. "You should go." He shoved Cas back and shut the door in the guy's face.

Dean gave Cas a look which was met with a blank one. Guy probably did it on purpose. He slid the boxes onto the coffee table. “Nice of you to drop in."

"I've come to discuss a matter of great urgency."

"You wanna go out back?" He jerked a thumb in the direction of the sliding glass doors. "We can talk about it out there."

"I'm sure Taylor will find it informative."

"Nah, I'll head out." Taylor stood. He lifted a few slices of cheese pizza onto a napkin and snagged a packet of red pepper flakes. Dean felt an odd sort of warmth towards the guy. Not only did he cut people a break by knowing when to leave, he wasn't shy about taking some pizza for the road. Taylor gave a wave, "See you around."

When the door clicked closed, Cas said, "I've spoken with Bobby and Rufus, and I'm to take you to see them. Come with me."

He stretched hands toward the both of them and poked them both in the forehead.

  


  
The three of them were wrenched into existence in the middle of Bobby's living room. Dean could see it now, that long road of constipation that stretched out before them. He coughed a few times. Sam looked nauseated and put a hand on the wall for support.

Castiel strode forward and into the kitchen. "They are here."

Bobby looked up from a few large books. “Boys, you know where the beer's at."

"Ah man," Dean complained. "What about dinner?"

“Hey, Rufus," Sam said as Dean went to the fridge. "How was Oklahoma?"

Dean grabbed two Sierra Nevadas, carefully avoiding the jar of congealed lamb's blood on the second shelf. A second later, Cas had zapped back, pizza boxes under one arm. Dean took them from him, mood much improved. "Sweet."

Sam sat across from Bobby. “That's a nice laptop."

"I'm not from the Stone Age if that's what you're implying." Bobby pushed the laptop over for inspection. “It's thanks to you two, though. Without you boys, most of us old-timers wouldn't know the difference between the 'on' button and our thumbs up our asses."

Dean had to jump in on that one. “That's because there _is_ no big difference between—"

Sam turned in his chair, and gave him an incredulous look. “Really, Dean?"

Dean shoved pizza in his mouth while Bobby continued. “Talked Brixton through Dropbox the other day, easier way to send videos."

“Videos?" Sam asked.

“Woman over in Idaho managed to catch some of her hunts on film, and other guys've started sendin' em around as well so people can learn from em or just show off. I put up a few myself, if you want to watch em. So, what I'm sayin is, thanks, Sam. I know I've been hard on you, but you've really helped out around here."

Dean wiped greasy fingers on his jeans while Sam and Bobby talked about computers. He looked to where Cas was standing near the bookshelf. “So, why did you bring us here?"

"I Google Mapped Purgatory," Castiel said. All heads swiveled his way, conversation pulled to a full stop.

"And?" Rufus asked.

"It is listed as existing in either Maine or Rhode Island," Cas told them. "However, I believe the names of these towns to be coincidental."

Dean said, “Look, the internet's great and all, but it's man-made. If Henriksen told you it would help you find Purgatory, he was lying."

“It helped me locate you and Sam."

Bobby cut in. "Hold on a tick. Cas found you online?"

“Yeah. How did that happen, anyway?" Sam asked.

"Victor Henriksen explained that the internet is where people leave the greatest trail," Cas said. "The world of electronic signals is a development over the last century, a world within a world which I did not yet have access to. He explained that the internet allows you to pull any two points together so that one may step between the two, which is similar to how I travel in this vessel."

“The world really is flat, then," Sam said.

“Correct," Cas said. "You were born with this knowledge, of course, but Humanity tends to talk itself into all manner of complex and insurmountable ideas, rendering the world a round and untraversable land."

"Right," Dean said, dismissing this as useless. "Cas, you had something important you were getting to. So...."

"So?"

"So lay it on us."

Cas stared at Dean as he explained. "As of late, I have studied the scripture and searched out information from a variety of reputable and less reputable sources, continuing the work that Crowley had invested so much time in. I believe I have discovered not only the location of Purgatory, which is, at the very least, unexpected, but also the means to send souls to their final resting place."

"Heaven or Hell, you mean?" Sam clarified.

"Correct."

Bobby leaned forward in his chair. "What weapon can do that?"

"I've called it a weapon in the past," Cas said. "But it would be more precise to call it a tool. You've come into contact with it before actually, when Balthazar cut it to pieces and sold portions of it into the world."

"The staff of Moses." Dean remembered the chunk of wood that the young boy in Pennsylvania had used to take revenge on his brothers' killers. "I thought that only punished people, in frankly very gruesome ways."

"It enacted six out of the ten plagues," Bobby said.

"Yes. The staff has been used in varied ways in the past, but its main function is to lead those who are lost."

"To Hell?" Sam asked slowly.

"Or Heaven, yes."

Bobby adjusted his cap, deep in thought. Rufus stared intently at Cas and Sam squinted. "And you think it would work on these so-called lost souls, too?"

"I believe so."

"Souls who are on Earth," Sam continued.

There was a glint in Cas' eye, the look he got sometimes when he was leading Dean to an answer he couldn't say outright, like he was bending the rules. "Yes."

There was a thoughtful pause. Dean didn't know what the big deal was, why everyone was looking poop-faced and shell-shocked, because everything seemed like it was going good now; Cas had cracked the case and Dean had a whole crust of pizza in his mouth. Definition of great.

"Well all right then," he said, breaking the silence after he'd managed to chew and swallow. "Knew you had it in hand, Cas. You gonna deliver the goods, or what?"

"I will return shortly," Cas said, and was gone.

"Something can be said for you boys," Rufus said. "You've got an angel on your side. Wonder what your dad would have said if he'd known about that."

"He didn't think angels existed," Dean said.

"Neither did the rest of us."

"Dad would have probably shot Cas in the face," Sam muttered.

"Well, I stabbed him in the chest on first meeting." Dean grabbed a bottle from the shelf by the couch and screwed off the top. "Bobby, Rufus, let me fill 'er up for you."

And so the evening went.

  


  
They eventually settled on the porch, Sam and Dean on the ground, legs stretching down the steps, and Bobby and Rufus in rickety rocking chairs like fogeys, weaving tales into the evening air.

"There was that time we were in Japan," Rufus was saying, hours after the sun had gone purple along the edge of the earth. "Long time ago, nigh on twenty years."

"Hokkaido," Bobby said.

Rufus nodded, less severe than usual in his chair, glass in hand and the dry noise of night bugs around them. "Hokkaido. Bobby here had learned how to speak some Japanese before we left, was pretty damn good at it."

Bobby picked up. "But once I got there, I couldn't communicate a damn thing. Had to learn everything like it was new, somehow. We were there five months. Mainly, though, since it was who we were working with, we learned conversational Ainu."

"We've always called ourselves hunters," Rufus said. "But you could just as well say 'travelers.' Hunting is just one aspect."

Sam nodded. It hit Dean that they hadn't sat like this since over a year an a half ago, since Lucifer and Michael.

"Nothing beats that time in Thessaloniki."

"Whoo, Mount Olympus."

"You're serious?" Sam had that look on his face, like he couldn't believe they hadn't been told that before, like he hadn't ever suspected Bobby and Rufus to have troves of stories going back a couple of decades. He leaned forward, saying incredulously: "Greek gods?"

Bobby waved modestly. "Just a couple low-level dryads. We were on another job, just sorta happened along the way. But the real story? The real story, boys, is that Rufus here had a little problem."

"Oh yeah?" Dean asked.

"Look," Rufus said. "You boys ever wonder why I only drink expensive whiskey?"

Dean snuck a look at Sam, whose face said _no_.

"Well," Rufus said. “It's not because it's a fine, fine drink, smooth like magic and goes down like butter—although that's true, and I hope you boys know it by now. No, the real reason is that Ouzo got me, and it got me good." Rufus looked a stern look to them both. "What I'm sayin' is, you watch yourselves. Some things you see on the job, some things you do, you think it ain't gonna change you. You think you're gonna walk on water and make it out of every poker game with your hats still on. But it don't work like that; sometimes it really gets you, and you gotta be prepared."

Dean glanced to Sam, Sam who'd drunk liters of demon blood. Cas said he'd been changed, forever, which was probably why Dean was being eaten alive by mosquitoes right then, and Sam was sitting there untouched.

Bobby was patting Rufus on the back, saying, "Remember what I told you to say, Rufus, _then thelo ena potiri ouzo_ , 'I don't want a glass of ouzo.' Just gotta tell 'em."

Rufus' eyes were glassy at the memory. "Can't eat licorice any more, either. Gives me instant relapse." He rolled his shoulders, shaking it off. "Ruins the detox."

"Then there was the time Rufus had been forced to flee the police in...well, a multitude of circumstances," Bobby told them.

Dean was laughing into his hands after this relentless collection of stories which strung together, one after another. Sam almost spit his drink all over the wood of the steps when Bobby told him what it was that happened with the chupacabras in Chicago, grabbing onto Dean's shirtfront to keep himself steady.


	4. Chapter 4

> The human soul is not a rubber ball.  
> It's vulnerable, impermanent,  
> but stronger than you know.  
> Death, "Appointment in Samarra"  
> 

In no time it was late and they were coming down from it.

"Where the hell's your angel?" Rufus said, not without some unexpected warmth to the words.

"He'll be back," Dean said.

Rufus shrugged. "Bobby, I've been meaning to ask. You got a dentist drill sitting around I could borrow?"

"Course I do. Just how backwards do you think I am?" Bobby stood from his rocking chair, and said to them, "You boys better shag ass outta here."

Dean nodded to them. "See you later, Bobby. Rufus.”

"Take whatever supplies you need. Sam, I've got a ton of kerosene if you want more than that. It's down in the panic room.”

"That's comforting,” Sam muttered, but he got to his feet and followed them inside.

Dean was left out there alone, leaning against the railing. He raised his face to the sky, scrunching his eyes closed. "O Castiel, who sometimes likes his burgers smothered in mustard—"

Within seconds, Cas reappeared like he'd been waiting for his call. "Dean."

"Sam's inside,” Dean told him. "But I thought you could give us a ride back in a sec.”

Cas stepped into Dean's personal space and pressed a six-inch piece of wood into his palm.

"Thanks, Cas, but my birthday's not till next year—"

"This is precious, Dean." Cas glared at him from up close. "Do not _lose_ it."

"Alright, keep your wings on.” He pocketed the staff. It felt like nothing special. "So, how's the family feud going?”

Cas looked back out over the yard. "It is...going.”

The evening breeze blew quietly as they waited for Sam. Cas stood still as a statue and Dean pulled his jacket tighter around himself. The smell of dust and the old metal of wrecked cars was everywhere. They were so far from a big town that the black sky was like cheesecloth, letting in light at a billion pinprick points. It felt like they were on some island in a dark sea, set adrift and forgotten in all of the rest of the enormous map of the United States.

"What are we doing here, Cas?” Dean finally said. And where was Sam? He was probably caught up checking something over in one of the fat almanacs of Hell that populated all the surfaces in the house, the nerd.

Cas deliberated before speaking. "Currently, you're looking into the abundance of lost souls. But in the more general scheme of things, you are still being saved, Dean.”

"So, what? It's like some lifelong process? Gimme a break."

"I'd think that much was clear, given that your life is proof of this." Cas frowned at him. "You have been saved numerous times from death, against all odds. When you were in Hell, where your soul should have stayed, I was sent to retrieve you.”

"Yeah, but you were sent for me.”

"A powerful force saved you after Lucifer rose.” All right, so Dean didn't have an answer for that one, how he and Sam had ended up on a plane.

"And there is still work for you," Cas told him. It might have been the breeze that sent goosebumps flush up Dean's arms, but Cas said it like it was the honest to God truth. "'He who is Righteous shall experience a great poverty of spirit, and shall seek to be merciful and good.' The world has need of the Righteous."

"Dammit, Cas—"

Cas just squinted at him and Dean felt uncomfortable in his own skin, standing there while the porch lights held steady overhead, swarms of tiny insects clouding out around the bulbs. He didn't know how to argue this one, make Cas see that he had his eggs in the wrong basket.

He wanted to tell Cas that who'd have thought, right? Who'd've thought it would come to this? It was them against the world. He wanted to tell him how, when he was young, his mother had told him that angels were watching over him, but to Castiel, it wouldn't have been important. The things they meant to one another defied syntax, were like poetry lost in translation. There was a war raging in Heaven and here Dean was, spilling out his small town problems.

Dean thought about this when Cas turned his gaze to meet his and Dean felt the contact like a salve on his soul, like he always did, like redemption was right around the corner. Cas didn't need this on him, really, and Dean had never, for his part, believed he needed a savior.

"I still say you've got the wrong guy. I've done a lot of bad things, Cas.” Dean's voice almost cracked under the effort of saying so. "Really bad. And recent, too."

Cas turned and advanced on him seriously, almost angry in posture.

"Dean,” he said. "Given my millions of years of rigid obedience and Divine Love, you'd think you would trust my ability to see what is right before my eyes, the deeds you are capable of."

"I think that's something you're not getting. Cas, me and Sam have done some messed up shit."

"You and Sam—" Cas started, but then he paused, like he was shuffling all of the useless words in the English language to find the most approximate fit.

Dean thought he was going to give him some crap about destiny, and how they'd work through it just like they had before, but then Cas went and blew it out of the water.

"If you were to take a moment to consider the magnitude of such actions," he said. "In the context of all that you've been through, what sacrifices you two have made, one might see the things you and your brother have done as indicative of one of the greatest love stories ever written."

Dean was astounded, felt the bottom of his stomach drop out and his face heat up like a house on fire.

"Well, uh. Thanks."

Cas, for his part, seemed unimpressed. "I'm referring, of course, to what you have done for Humanity. Saving the _world_ , Dean."

"Oh," Dean said.

"But I suppose this also applies to fornication with your brother." Cas lifted his chin. "In which case, you have my blessing."

Sam stomped out onto the porch just then, finally, two jugs of lighter fluid under his arms and saving Dean from one hell of a conversation. He looked between Dean and Cas, furrowing his brow. Dean just arched an eyebrow in response, curling his clammy hands into his pockets and feeling like he needed to sit down, maybe have another drink.

Cas reached towards the both of them, and forehead poked them into the living room of their darkened house.

  


  
"Stay awhile, Cas," said Dean to the empty room.

He leaned against the counter, watching as Sam went to put the lighter fluid by the table and shrug out of his jacket. Dean was experiencing a lightness of soul that was in all parts due to having confessed to an angel and having their so-called trespasses subsequently dismissed like they were just petty change in the piggy bank of human sin.

"What?" Sam said when Dean had stared at him for far too long.

Dean didn't answer for a second. He crossed and uncrossed his arms over his chest, all nervous energy, and made a few aborted attempts at giving Sam a meaningful look. The distance between them felt impossible to cross.

Finally, he just reached out a hand, swallowing hard. "C'mere."

Sam stared back, unyielding, standing way over by the table.

"Why?” he asked. "I heard what he said to you."

"And?"

"What do you mean, _and_? So just because Castiel told you it was okay, now you're willing to let me fuck you?"

"Woah, there are so many things wrong with that sentence I'm not going to even start. Mainly that you said it at all. Have some friggen class, dude."

"Stop joking around here, Dean," Sam said. "I've been dealing with your denial for years, the least you could do is respect me enough to talk to me about this. Me. Your brother."

Dean had to explain this because Sam was looking all wounded deer. Why was he always, _always_ the cause of that?

"I know you're going to say I'm being a bitch about this," Sam said. "But I don't know what else to do."

"Look," Dean said, voice breaking. "Look, I wasn't there, okay?"

"What?"

"I let you go. I let you go and let you throw yourself into Hell. Into _Hell_. Not some demon, not some dick angel—me. I did that. Your own flesh and blood, your family." He was shaking, hadn't even noticed. "Something you didn't hear Cas say, is he felt it, he felt how your soul was bloody like you'd been flayed alive down there, Lucifer's play thing."

"Look, I—"

"Dammit, Sammy, would you just listen?" And he hadn't meant to raise his voice, but there it was, he was yelling. "Before talking to Cas tonight, I didn't know where things stood on this. I couldn't let five minutes of hot, fingers-in-ass action send you to an eternity in the Cage. Do you think I could live with myself, huh? If you got your soul, just for me to send it right back again? I will not let that happen, you hear me?"

"Dean." Sam's fists were clenched at his sides, but he quirked his mouth when he said weakly, "Only five minutes?"

"Oh shut up." He backed off, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "Besides, I mean, what if it reminds you of something, huh?"

"Of what?" Sam said. "Getting sucked off in a bathroom somewhere? Having sex with five different women in unknown Massachusetts apartments? That's the only other thing bothering you about this?"

"The only thing? This is serious, Sam."

"Well, now we know it's not enough to send me back, and every part of me wants it. It's not just some sudden thing. It has everything to do with who I am. I've always felt it, even when I didn't have a soul. I mean, that has to prove something, right?"

"And how do you remember that?" Sam was going to scratch and scratch and bring the whole wall crashing down. Dean was so damn angry. He wanted to take it out on Sam physically, to give him dead arm or shove him into something stable and kiss him until he couldn't remember their own last name.

Sam seemed like the opposite of angry, gone introspective, eyes dark. He left the table and came to stand closer. "I only remember flashes, like I said."

The back of Dean's neck prickled, the feeling of being hunted. "Yeah, well, don't. Just don't even try."

Sam continued anyway. "I get the feeling I used to go out all night. To bars or strip clubs. But then, suddenly, you're in my memories. It's when I got you back I guess, from Lisa's, and after that I started to stay in, instead. All night, counting the minutes in a dark motel room. And you want to know what I did?"

"Stop talking," Dean said. "I don't wanna know." But he was rooted to the spot, couldn't take his eyes off Sam's mouth saying the words, couldn't stop listening.

"I used to watch you sleep." Sam let it drop like it was heavy.

"Sam."

"Oh God—" Dean stood his ground when Sam moved into his space, saying, "I used to watch you sleep, whole nights of you tossing and turning and sometimes—"

"Sam, shut the hell up." He grabbed him by the arm, making to push him away, but Sam used it to haul him against the fridge, knocking off the one magnet they had.

"—sometimes you just lay there in all your clothes," he said against skin, nosing Dean's temple, inhaling deep while Dean kneed him feebly in the leg. "Dean, I remember. It was better than anything I'd seen."

"Sam."

"Ever."

"Don't—"

"I used to watch you," Sam said. "This was so objective. I wanted—"

Dean didn't give him a chance to finish. The kid had to stop saying things like this, these horrific nothings. He fisted the front of Sam's v-neck and wrenched him down into something open-mouthed, wondering if it could be as good as he remembered it. Sure enough, he felt this eternal grace starting at the mouth and then exploding down into his chest. It was so breathless that they were more seeking out air against each others' tongues than kissing.

It wasn't meant to happen this way, Dean knew that, he and Sam all over each other in a midnight kitchen. But here they were, all the same. He told himself this while the world went quiet around them, all air stilled where it stood, as Sam moved in against him with both hands smoothing up his sides, pressing them together from knees to chest, and Dean scrape-combed his fingers back through Sam's ridiculous hair with both hands, feeling the resistance. He sucked at Sam's tongue and Sam pulled closer, Dean kissing him to distraction.

Dean had wanted to do this since the day he'd broken into Sam's apartment at Stanford. He'd never put a name to it, it was something insidious that coiled like light in his chest, and made him throw himself off of things and under things, and spend four decades in Hell. He'd always wanted Sam wrong, wanted to protect him by covering him bodily. His working his way down Sam's front only moments later, and biting at the button of Sam's jeans, humming nonsensically, just proved it: he couldn't be trusted.

Sam said, "I told you so."

No, there really wasn't a way to do this by halves. He put both hands in Sam's pockets and tugged, pooling the jeans on the tile. His head almost immediately hit the fridge handle.

Sam sounded honestly worried, "Sorry, um, sorry, I—" He tried to step away from where he'd thrust forward on impulse, but Dean grabbed him by the hips before he could step away completely, and yanked down the last fabric between them, fingers under elastic.

He licked the underside of Sam's dick in one, with a hand at the base, and swallowed him down. Sam let out some sort of noise, Dean couldn't even concentrate on it with the complete, weirdness, the normalcy, of this moment, focusing instead on not scraping at all with his teeth, because even if Sam was a pain sometimes, that would be a jerk move.

He leaned his head back against the fridge so Sam could just rut shallowly into his mouth, groaning when Dean put a hand at his ankle while he gripped the top of the fridge with one hand, fumbling around with the other until he was rubbing clumsy fingers against Dean's cheek.

Sam was loving this. He was gasping up there, obviously trying hard not to lose it. Spit was all over Dean's chin in no time, a real mess, and he was having trouble breathing through his nose, while Sam was huffing breath out like it was difficult to stay standing. Dean could do something about that.

He pushed Sam away and squeezed up between him and the fridge with difficulty.

"You serious?" Sam said, blanketing Dean against the fridge with his dick jutting hard against Dean's hip in a shameless way. "You really going to stop now?"

Dean bit hard at Sam's neck for no reason other than he could.

"Get out of your pants," he said.

For once, Sam instantly complied, stepping out of the pile of jeans and boxers. Dean splayed a hand on his chest, and shoved him away, towards the living room, Sam grinning wolfishly. He stopped long enough to pull Dean's shirt off and hold him hard against the door frame, to fuck into his mouth with his tongue and too much spit, until Dean pushed him away to kick off his shoes. Oh, they were so doing this.

Sam waited for a second, watching, before he said, "Get on the couch, Dean."

They tumbled onto the cushions, one of Sam's legs splaying out under the coffee table. Once they were there, though, once they made eye contact, Sam's intent seemed to a cool a little, turn more uncertain, even with his dick pressing up and rubbing between them against the denim of Dean's jeans.

Dean propped himself up on an elbow and rubbed a hand over Sam's shoulder. He felt a weird smile tug at his mouth.

"What?" Sam breathed.

You're everything I've ever done, Dean thought, looking down at him. You're the concatenation of all the moments in my life. But all that came out, of course, was, "Just, you know...." He waved a hand to Sam's torso.

"Great," Sam said, clearly only half-joking. He put his face in Dean's neck. "We've known each other all our lives, and you just want me for my ass."

"Yeah, you're fucking hot," Dean told him. "But I'm talking about the tattoo, man."

He could try for funny every time, but his tone always slid sideways when he felt it. Sam heard it, too. He gripped Dean at the back of both legs, pulled him to straddling, looking kind of soulfully up at him.

Dean rolled his hips, and at least that made Sam gasp, cheesy look turning to broken lust in seconds. Dean leaned into it, where Sam's hand had instantly smoothed up his shoulder to his neck, leaned forward, elbows on either sides of Sam's head, and felt Sam's thumb rubbing over the sandpaper stubble on his cheek and urging him down. Dean kissed him with urgency.

Sam worked a hand between them, getting Dean's pants down just a few inches, so that all that material bunched up uncomfortably under Dean's balls, but that was only an issue for a second. Soon it was out of mind, he had his forehead against' Sam's shoulder, looking down in the most awkward of angles between them, where Sam was working them both together.

He dragged his blunt nails down Sam's thigh and bit Sam, hard, as he came, Sam following shortly after.

Dean floated on the moment, out of his head and draped all over Sam like a starfish, not cuddling, but, you know, fitting into him like he could stay there, content to lie there for a few minutes, at least until one of them wanted a beer or got hungry.

Sam abruptly hugged him tight in his muscled arms for a second, before pulling away, sitting up, and grabbing his shirt from the floor. Dean rolled to sitting with a groan, doing up his jeans with some effort and then lounging back.

"Athletic is right," he said.

"What?"

"Nothin." Sam was putting his feet up on the coffee table and lounging out like he'd just fucked the prom queen, and Dean reaching over for his shirt, suddenly couldn't bear to look at him, felt like he was a stranger at that moment.

He'd been through this with countless people, but hadn't expected the same feeling with Sam, not after just about the hottest hand job of his life. He thought he probably just had to wait it out, at least for twenty minutes or so till he could get it together.

He fumbled for the remote. "Wanna see what's on?"

He pressed a few buttons, trying to collect himself.

Sam put a hand on his. "That's the phone, Dean. You're not getting weird about this already, are you? You're uncharacteristically speechless right now."

Dean tossed the phone onto the table and looked Sam square in the face.

"Look," he said, overly-defensive but needing to get it out. "Things really suck sometimes."

"What?" Sam was understandably thrown. He looked blissed out and confused.

"This is really fucked up," Dean told him.

"Dean," Sam said, but Dean waved him quiet.

"Sometimes we haven't had each others' backs. Sometimes you don't have a soul and go on some psycho rampage. Sometimes I can't do all the things I need to do, probably a hundred things I've done to fuck up your life. But in spite of all that, I've never wanted anything more than this." He gestured between them. "Okay? This right here. I mean, what the hell?"

Sam put a careful hand on Dean's foot. Dean bit the inside of his cheek before continuing.

"How screwed up is that? How fucking sappy and incestuous, I mean really, Sam. This is not some smutty romance novel. I refuse to live my life like that."

Sam had moved to sit cross-legged next to him. "Dean, I—"

"And that's it," Dean cut him off. "We've talked about it."

"What! I haven't even—"

"Well, you just sat there gaping, but it's been spoken about, and now we will never," he held up a finger in Sam's face. "Never have to talk about it again."

"No way," Sam said and grabbed him. Well, he manhandled him really, because the size of the guy's muscles were obscene.

"Ever," Dean got out, before Sam tipped him off the couch and managed to kiss him hard so Dean's head smacked against the wood floor. "If you give me another concussion—Get off me you giant—"

"I knew it," Sam said, using his mammoth weight to his advantage. "I totally—" Dean got an accidental elbow to the neck.

And of course that's when the hunt caught up to them. There was a crashing sound from next door, loud enough that they heard it from their own house.

  


  
They yanked on their pants and shoes as fast as they could, laces getting caught in fingers, and Dean only ended up with one sock on because Sam stole the other. After grabbing a sawed-off each, they sprinted outside, across their lawn and into the neighbor's front yard. Sam ran around the back while Dean knocked furiously at the front door.

"Leila!" He yelled. "Taylor!"

Something could have fallen, crashed. They could be overreacting. But he and Sam were usually right about these things, had that instinct. Dean pulled out his keys and found the lock pick. It took him under a minute, but any delay was too long. When he entered, the house was utterly still.

He stood in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, and listened. The house was low-lit, like no one was home, but he knew what he'd heard.

He breathed out deep, and it appeared as a stream of frosty air. He whirled where he stood, ready to blow away a ghost.

But there was nothing.

Dean walked through the quiet house, shotgun held half-raised in front of him, extra salt rounds in his pocket along with the piece of staff that he had no idea how to use.

He and Sam had left Bobby's past two, and who knows how long they'd been home after. Now it was three in the morning? Maybe four? What it came down to was Leila and Taylor should have been there, should have woken up to investigate the noise at least. But walking through the dead house, there was no sign of them.

"Dean!" Sam called from upstairs. Dean sprinted back the way he'd come, took the stairs by twos.

"Sam?" He followed his voice, running down the hall.

"Dean!"

He found himself in a bedroom. Sam was standing against one wall, and coming towards him was what appeared to be the corporeal form of Betty Oswald. Dean sidled around against the wall, raised his shotgun and pointed at her in case she attacked. Yeah, she looked more burnt than she had in the photograph, but it was her alright.

"Do you work here?" Betty asked Sam. The windows started to shake, a jittery sound, and the lamp sparked. "Why are you in my office?"

"Yeah, we're new in town, sweetheart." He ducked a flying pillow. "What, no jello bowl?"

Sam held his hands in a placating gesture. "You were burned alive, Betty."

She didn't listen.

"Betty," Sam said. "Listen to me. You were burned, in a fire in the lab."

This drew her up short, the closet door swinging open and shut with jarring slams.

"Betty, there was an arsonist who, as far as we can gather, was against the research you were conducting." Dean held his gun at the ready for if—when—this didn't go as planned.

"I'm so sorry," Sam continued. "You're a spirit. But we're here to help you."

There was a crash downstairs. Betty tilted her head as if listening, then flickered out.

They were out the door in a second, and down the stairs in five. Dean skidded to a halt when they got to the kitchen. Taylor was surrounded by them, a mass of burn victims by the kitchen table.

"That answers that question," Sam said.

There were over twenty, maybe twenty-five, Dean didn't have the time to count, obviously. His skin was prickling at the temperature change and he made a snap decision to lure the spirits away.

"Hey!" Dean yelled. Taylor turned, a horrified look on his face. It probably looked like a fucking zombie apocalypse to him. Guy was gonna have nightmares for years.

"What are you doing here?" Taylor shouted, and, okay, the guy had some balls. "Get out of here!"

"Where's Leila?" Dean yelled over the creaking of the house, the flickering of the lights.

"Leave!" Taylor yelled, hitting a ghost with something in his hands. He must have gotten lucky, picked up something iron, a fire poker or something, because the ghost disappeared in a curl of smoke. He swung at the next one. "Leave, now!"

Sam ran towards the group of slow spirits, shooting, just went right into them to get to Taylor, but he was thrown back, into a wall. Dean didn't look to where he'd fallen, he had to just assume that Sam was okay. He raised his shotgun at the mass of spirits.

"Over here," he growled.

They started swarming towards him, one by one, faces charred, clothing singed, moving away from Taylor. Dean blasted one full of rock salt and it dissipated into smoke. The others moved back and away, before coming on more quickly. Dean stepped out of the way of a falling house plant, which crashed in a mess of dirt and ceramic shards on the floor.

He loaded and shot. Shot again, taking them out slowly and, at the same time, backing into the next room, drawing them away from what he was about to do next.

The back of his legs hit the couch. They were in the living room, then, and this was it.

Dean heard his name being shouted, noted Sam limping into the room and trying to make it through the mess of spirits. Dean ignored him, ignored the group of ghosts coming at him with their curling, bloody skin.

He fumbled at his pocket as the crowd moved in on him. He might die of being crushed if he didn't get them first. How embarrassing, being suffocated slowly by a writhing mass of semi-corporeal spirits who were making his skin crawl and ripping at his clothing. They weren't angry enough to kill, but they were certainly dangerous as a group, pressing in, squeezing the air out of Dean's lungs, his body going numb under them. There was no way out.

Letting go his shotgun somewhere at his side, he finally got a hand in his pocket, fumbling for the piece of the staff. He hoped to God this worked.

His grip were tight around it but his fingers were going numb it was so cold in here, made 'em clumsy, so the staff—his vision went starry. Yeah, that sort of thing happened all the time.

He tried to beat off the figures around him, but the staff was wrenched out of his grip, skittering off somewhere, useless. He tried to bend down to get at it, but of course he couldn't, not while being crushed from all sides.

He was gasping for breath, heaving out icicles and full-on shivering as the spirits crowded in close, pulling at his t-shirt and scratching through to bare skin, and ripping at that as well. It felt like ice searing into him. He was pressed to the ground under the force of bodies, head knocked into the carpet as he was actually stepped on by one spirit, causing him to bite his cheek so hard he tasted blood.

The idea that he might die tonight never crossed his mind, but it would be pretty fucking embarrassing when people discovered his trodden-over body, unconscious and suffocated in a slow mosh pit of lost souls. He was thankful they'd been weakened already, their bones partial ashes somewhere in the soil.

These were his last, crazed thoughts before help swept in. What could only be described as divine light flooded the room, permeating everything, even his own body right down to his bones. He could feel it like a knife. He shut his eyes tight and hoped to God that that light meant something good.

  


  
Abruptly, Dean could breathe again, if just a bit. Air dragged into his lungs even though one bad mother was right on his face with its blistered skin freezing against him, and a few ragged feet were still trampling him. There must have been an explosion, he thought, although he felt unclear on all points.

Dean must have slipped from consciousness at the next crash of light, because he came to with a sharp crack of his head to the floor. He gasped back into the present, grappling the world back into focus and blinking through the dust where he was splayed, arms and legs akimbo, next to an overturned chair.

When he managed to focus on the spirits, he saw they had drawn back, away from him and towards the light.

All around him, the spirits seemed stuck in place. They began to glow, flickering as if spun through with neon, while Dean struggled to his elbows. He picked out Betty Oswald in the group, watching as she glided past him, staring into the middle distance.

"Such a beautiful face..." was the last thing she said before she flashed incorporeal, then back, flaring out like the last moments of a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

And then she was gone. All of them were. The spirits had vanished, and the light along with them.

Dean's head lolled to the side, and through the powdered dust of where the drywall had exploded in from the kitchen, he saw a figure standing strong against the thin light of dawn through the back window, the chunk of staff held like a sword in her hand.

Dean spat blood onto the lighter-than-blood carpet, sure to stain, and gasped out: "You've got to be kidding."

The world was swimming in his vision. Another concussion. Great. Leila stood in the doorway, breathing hard, staring intently down at the seemingly innocuous piece of wood in her palm. She looked at Sam, who was struggling to his feet by the stairs, and then to Dean.

"Nice job hiding in plain sight," she said to them. "Use what you know, that's what they always say."

Dean's head was aching like he'd been hit by a semi. "What?"

"Or is it 'Show, don't tell'?" she mused. "Hmm. Well, anyway, you boys did a good job playing the mild-mannered gay couple. I didn't suspect a thing until I saw you sneaking in the back door, Sam, and even then...."

"Well, I've got a bit of criminal in me," Sam said. "Always seems to shine out at the worst of times."

Dean grabbed on to a chair and hoisted himself up from the floor. Leila made as if to pocket the staff, but then thought better of it. She waved it aloft, instead.

"What the hell is this, anyway?"

"Oh, you know,” Dean said, before he passed out again. "Staff of Moses."

  


  
"Hunters?" Sam repeated later from the couch, as Leila handed him a tube of antiseptic ointment. The only thing that made this okay was that Leila and Taylor looked just as shocked as they he and Sam were.

Dean shook out his wrist tentatively, but that was the wrong thing to do, it became instantly clear. He winced and stuck his fist in his pocket to hold it straight.

Sam, on the other hand, was gesturing widely. "But this is great!"

Dean squinted at him, right along with the other two. "Alright, Sammy. One too many knocks to the melon."

"Wait, hold on a second." Taylor pointed at each of them like he was piecing together a particularly obvious puzzle. "Sam. And Dean."

Leila stopped picking up pieces of the broken lamp. "Sam and Dean? As in, _Winchester_?"

Sam froze, and Dean said, "That'd be us, yeah."

"No way! My dad knew your dad!" Taylor said. "Crazy son of a bitch, my old man used to say, but one hell of a hunter."

"Small world," Sam said. "Us living next door to each other. And to think it all went down in your house, of all places."

Leila frowned. "That's not our house. We just moved here for a while. We were trying to find the one that was haunted, just like you."

Sam shrugged. "Man, all I'm saying is multiple hunters on one case, what are the chances?"

"Yeah. How'd you guys even hear about this?" Dean asked.

"We found out online," Taylor said. "Just like you, right? The hunter forum?"

"Hunter forum? You serious?"

Taylor grinned. Guy wasn't as terse as he'd let on, apparently, once he was with his own kind. "Yeah, you never been? Check it out some time. There's a list of suspicious activity people come across, a lore wiki, and loads about you on there, too."

Leila grimaced. "A lot of gossip you might want to set straight, by the way."

Sam, all insatiable curiosity, had to ask. "Just what sort of rumors are we talking about?"

"Well...something about the Apocalypse, but that's never been corroborated, and of course...." For the first time since they'd met, Leila looked shifty. "Well, maybe they're not rumors."

Dean grabbed Sam by the elbow. "Well, we gotta be going."

Taylor clapped him and Sam on the back. "I understand. But it was good meeting you."

At the door, Leila said, "Oh, and Sam?"

Dean stopped pulling him away.

"Yeah?"

"Almost forgot. A demon once asked us about you," Leila said. "It was a couple years back. Tried to waste the bastard, thought I had him, but he got free. I think he was putting me on, to get information."

Dean went clear-headed and murderous like he always did when he heard something was after Sam. He asked, jaw clenched, "Did you happen to catch a name?"

She frowned. "Crowley? Ring any bells?"

The knot in Dean's chest loosened. "Yeah, we knew the guy. But he's dead, now. Killed by an angel."

The look on she and Taylor's faces at the news was priceless.

"Ha ha," Leila said. "Very funny."

"Laugh all you want," Sam said. "But we're telling you the truth."

"Angels? You're serious?"

"No shit," Taylor said. "Makes you wonder what the fuck else is out there. But then, that's the fucking job."

They all shared a look of understanding, and Dean almost felt nostalgic or something, regretful.

"Well," he said.

They couldn't stand around like this forever, and hunters didn't begrudge you leaving all of a sudden, so they all shook hands and went their separate ways.

"Man," Dean said, as they walked back to their house, along the pristine sidewalk with fucking tulips lining the low brick-border, just past dawn. "It makes sense is what I'm saying. Hot girl, smart, jogs a freaking half marathon every morning—a real badass. It just makes sense that anyone we meet who's that awesome is gonna be a hunter. I was starting to question my beliefs there for a second. And that Taylor kid, well. He's seen one too many demons, that's all I'm sayin."

Sam slowed. "Think we should keep in contact?"

Dean was about to say no, but why the hell not? He shrugged. "Couldn't hurt."

Sam jogged back to knock at the door. Dean watched as he talked with his hands, Leila pulled out her phone to exchange numbers. He watched as Sam shrugged, smiled one last time, and came back to him.

Dean raised his hand in half wave, half salute. When Sam caught up with him, they opened their front door for the last time and went to pack.

  


  
A few hours later, they threw their stuff in the back seat of the Impala. Car was looking good after the few weeks of tune-ups, replaced parts, a wax job. Better than good, in fact. The new wipers would do a lot for all the rain where they were sure to be headed.

They were on the road again, setting out. Well, sitting in the driveway for a few more minutes, really, with Dean flipping the sun visor and then spending half a minute leaning out the window to adjust the side mirror even though it was fine, he had full visibility.

"Our first house," Sam sighed, mocking him prettily. Dean smacked him on the arm, hard.

When Sam laughed, it was like relief welling up and seeping out everywhere. Dean rolled his eyes. "Shut up, man."

"Look at you." He couldn't keep that smile off his face apparently. "Look at you, getting all maudlin."

"Am _not_." Dean put the car in gear.

He let the engine idle as he peered up at the shuttered windows.

Leaving their four walls and a roof shouldn't have felt this way. He'd known it was temporary from the beginning, and he had the firm and unstated belief that home was where the heart was. But anyway, he should have known, he thought while he surveyed the lawn that Sam had mowed last week. Sam had mowed the stupid lawn like it mattered, and Dean had tried to peg him in the ass with crushed beer cans.

So they'd leave now, because that's what people do. They skid across life on their own luck, memories like a trail of buoys tugging behind them in the water. They'd carry the experience with them like impressions, anyway; he and Sam were good at that.

Sam laughed again next to him, jerking Dean out of his own head. He felt something yanking in his chest, something nostalgic, kinda happy, and he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw colors. He had to snap out of it.

"What's up with you?" Sam asked.

"It's a fucking wasteland, man," Dean said, almost like an apology, feeling the tugging of something hopeful in his chest. He pulled the car out of park and reversed back into the street.

"This isn't a wasteland," Sam told him. "This is our lives."  



End file.
